Pretend She's Here

by Luanne Rice

  The next channel showed Tommy, Mick, and Iggy. It must have been an older clip, before my email, because they were shoulder-to-shoulder, taller than anyone else, searching the marsh where my mother and Mrs. Porter had been walking. There were other people, too, in horizontal lines like you see on newscasts where there is a missing person, when neighbors join the police to scour in fields and stretches of water for the dead body. My brothers had returned home from their faraway colleges to look for my corpse.

  The shot that hurt most was one of Bea. She stood alone on the front steps of our church, staring into the distance. She looked desolate—in the close-up I could see circles under her eyes, her skin so pale you couldn’t even see her freckles. I remembered when once she’d told me about her boyfriend, James, how they had figured out how to get into the church steeple, how they went up there to look all the way down the Connecticut River and across Long Island Sound to Orient Point, and to kiss.

  But I could tell she wasn’t at church for the view or to meet James. Standing right there, oblivious to the camera, her lips were moving. Was she talking to me, the way I talked to Lizzie, or was she praying? Was she angry at me for leaving? All three. I was sure of it.

  “My three colleens,” my father would say about Anne, Bea, and me. In Ireland, colleen was another word for “girl.” I looked at Bea, my colleen, at her bright azure eyes and long, straight brown hair, at the thick Aran Isles sweater I realized—with a tiny, surprising burst of outrage—she had taken from my closet. We were always borrowing each other’s things, getting mad at each other for stealing clothes, especially sweaters. This one had been knit for me by Anne. She’d given it to me for my last birthday.

  “Brat,” I would have said to Bea, if I were there.

  The last clip showed my parents walking on the beach. My dad’s hands were jammed into his pockets. My mother’s arms were tight across her chest, as if holding herself together. The screen caption said, A family torn apart by alcohol.

  They weren’t speaking. They were fighting. They usually walked the beach holding hands, but now there was ten feet of space between them. I was sure my father felt betrayed because he believed what I had written: that Mom had relapsed and was drinking again.

  “You’re a drunk!” he had shouted at her once, the worst thing I’d ever heard. My gentle father, my always-loving mother. But she’d missed seeing the dress rehearsal of my play that afternoon. It was called Ghost Girl, and not only had I written it, I had played Ada, the spirit girl. I had felt so nervous and thrilled about kissing Dan—well, his character, Timothy—that I didn’t even notice my mother wasn’t in the audience.

  But later, after we finished rehearsing and I stood on the school steps with cold rain pelting down, I had a sinking feeling. I hitched a ride with Tilly McCabe’s mom, and when I got home, I found my mother passed out in bed. The fumes left no doubt that there’d been vodka involved.

  I looked for the bottle. My mom had hidden it behind cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink, so I carried it to the recycling bin in the garage. I shoved it down beneath the milk cartons and cardboard boxes and yogurt containers. We had all taken turns doing that over the years. No one had been better at it than my dad. Patrick called it “bottle music”—the sound of my father cleaning up after my mother, when Dad would wait till we’d all gone to bed to get rid of her empties.

  It was our way of protecting her, protecting each other. When you love someone as much as we love Mom, you don’t want anyone, even in the family, judging her. You tell yourself she doesn’t mean it, she’ll never do it again. Or you tell yourself she’s sick, she can’t help it. My dad and my brothers and sisters and I all took turns feeling furious at her, despair for her, hope that she’d stop. We never felt the same way at the same time.

  That day my dad reached his breaking point. He had planned to surprise my mother and me—meeting us at Beach Road Pizza, where she’d normally have taken me after a play, but we weren’t there. Because she’d blacked out.

  “Mary, you’re throwing everything away,” Dad had said. “I’ve given you a hundred chances—we all have. The only thing I’m grateful for is that you didn’t drive—that you missed the play, left your daughter in the rain. That’s good. Better than the alternative. You could have driven her into a telephone pole. So congratulations. You’re a drunk, but at least you didn’t kill Emily.”

  “Don’t even say those words,” my mother had said, starting to cry.

  “You want her to run away again?” my father asked. “Just stay on this path and she will. And I swear, Mary, when she does, I’ll never forgive you.”

  The next day my mother was on her way to rehab. The good news: She got sober. I know my dad was glad—we all were. But I’m not sure he ever really trusted her after that day. Not the way he had before she’d gotten so bad.

  Staring at the TV screen now, watching my parents recede down the empty beach, my mother’s back hunched and my father’s posture poker-straight, I remembered that day, my dad’s voice ringing in my head. This wasn’t my mother’s fault at all. This was because of me.

  “When you’re ready,” Mrs. Porter said now, “you will come upstairs. I want you to. I can’t wait.”

  Her eyes held my gaze. For just that minute I remembered how I’d practically lived at the Porters’ house after school, and during the years of my mother’s drinking, I’d relied on Mrs. Porter in ways she’d probably never know.

  “I’m sorry about the threat,” she said. “I don’t want it to be this way.”

  Her tone of voice made me realize she meant what she said. “Then don’t let it,” I said.

  She was silent for a long moment. Her chin started to wobble, and tears pooled in her eyes.

  “I don’t have a choice,” she said. “It’s like being possessed, like having a demon inside. Not a real one, I don’t mean that, but a compulsion to keep you here no matter what. That’s how much I need you. You’re sleeping in her bed; you’ll come upstairs and sit in her chair. I can never let you go, never.”

  I’d seen parents cry before—well, my mother—and it was always shocking, and I always tried to make it stop. In spite of everything, I felt Mrs. Porter’s desperation. Part of me cared. One thing a daughter of an alcoholic knows is how to take care of people: to keep the peace, to try to figure out how to make things better, to have compassion, to twist yourself into a pretzel in the hope you can keep them from drinking again. Because something is going on that you can’t possibly fathom, a hurt so deep it makes the sick person do terrible things—get drunk, kidnap your dead daughter’s best friend.

  “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Porter said again, wiping her eyes. “Your parents will be fine, you know. You’re just another runaway.”

  My throat ached, holding back a scream.

  “Good night,” she whispered, kissing my forehead.

  I didn’t answer. She left the room, and I heard her footsteps on the wood stairs. I lay awake, my heart pounding. In some way her apology convinced me even more than the knife that this was real. She had said she would never let me go, and suddenly I knew with absolute certainty that she meant it with everything she had.

  I pressed my face into my pillow and finally let out the scream. My chest heaved, aching as if I were having a heart attack. I sobbed until the pillowcase was soaked, and I hugged the pillow as hard as I could, wishing it were my mother, needing her comfort and needing so badly to protect her.

  I thought of how weird it was, that I’d written Ghost Girl before Lizzie had died. It had been about Ada, of course. But lying there in bed with my pillow soaked, it felt as if the play had been predictive, and about me—or a girl like me, anyway. To have a best friend die, to have her parents kidnap you, to have her mother threaten to murder your mom: It leaves you so alone, so off balance and unreal-feeling, that you become the ghost, the changeling, and you’re the one haunting school and the town you grew up in together. You used to be solid and strong. Now you’re mist.

  I wa
ited as long as I could. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

  She had said “ready,” and I swore I never would be. But she had told me about her need to keep me, and I had seen how close she’d gotten to my mother. Nearly every night now I dreamed of a knife slashing through skin and bone. I fought hard, my muscles burning as I grabbed, slapped, and punched to defend my mother. I turned the weapon on the attacker.

  The news stations stopped running my story. I flipped through the channels obsessively, hoping for a glimpse of my family, some indication they were still looking for me, that they still believed in me. After a while, the reporters moved on to other dark news: a six-year-old boy accidentally shot by his thirteen-year-old brother, the discovery of a human trafficking ring in a small Maine town, a search for two teenage hikers missing on Mount Katahdin.

  The steeple clock chimed six. Was it morning or night? She hadn’t come down with breakfast yet, so it had to be morning. My head felt foggy. In my dreams, I felt so alive. I was doing something, fighting back. When I woke up, I felt deadened. Numb, going through the motions. I felt the way my family had looked on TV: in shock, helpless, with no hope left.

  I washed my face and changed out of Lizzie’s nightgown into some of Lizzie’s clothes—jeans and a T-shirt. I tried the doorknob. Somehow I knew it would open, and it did. My legs felt heavy. I heard my feet clomping up the wooden stairs.

  There was a moment, just a few seconds, when I could have changed my mind. I stood on the top step, my hand on the brass doorknob that opened onto the kitchen. I knew that by walking through that door, I would be agreeing to the Porters’ way, entering their world. I would be leaving a big part of myself behind—I just didn’t know how big.

  I opened the door.

  Mrs. Porter was cooking eggs. Chloe was making toast. Without a word, I sat in the empty chair at the round kitchen table with bright yellow place mats. I noticed there were four place mats, as if the family had been expecting me. Mrs. Porter beamed at me.

  “Good morning, Lizzie,” Mrs. Porter said.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  “Orange juice?” Mr. Porter asked. But he just sat where he was. His face looked blank—or was that a tinge of annoyance behind his eyes? I got the sudden feeling he didn’t want me there.

  “She knows where it is,” Mrs. Porter said. “Help yourself, sweetie.”

  I went to the refrigerator. I was moving in slow motion, sleepwalking. I took out the carton. I stood in front of the cabinets and automatically opened the one that held the glasses. I poured the juice. A tiny bit slopped onto the shiny green stone countertop, and I wiped it with a sponge.

  We ate. The scrambled eggs were fluffy and perfect. I buttered my rye toast and smeared it with pear preserves. I knew they were homemade. All through the year Mrs. Porter made fresh preserves with fruit that Lizzie, Chloe, and I would pick at local orchards. I concentrated on every movement I made. Now I am taking a bite of toast; now I am having a sip of juice.

  “This is a special day,” Mrs. Porter said.

  “I thought we decided we would not treat it as remarkable,” Mr. Porter said. “What is so unusual about our ‘older daughter’ joining us for breakfast?”

  Definitely air quotes around older daughter.

  “You are so right,” Mrs. Porter said. “But I am in a celebratory mood. Look out the window! Bright sunshine, blue sky, and that maple tree! The leaves were flame red just two weeks ago, Lizzie! They’ve mostly fallen now, if only you had come up a few days ago, but there are still a few on the branches. Remember when you were little and you used to gather autumn leaves, and we’d iron them between sheets of wax paper?”

  “With melted crayons,” Chloe said.

  “Stained glass,” I said. That’s what Lizzie had called it. We would hang the colorful squares in our windows, and the sun would shine through and splash red and orange light on the floor.

  “Let’s go leaf peeping,” Mrs. Porter said. “It’s the weekend!”

  “Mom,” Chloe said. “I have Saturday study with Mel and Junie.”

  “Besides, the foliage is gone,” Mr. Porter said. “This is Maine, not Connecticut. You can see for yourself, Ginnie—the damn trees are practically bare.”

  “I feel like a ride,” Mrs. Porter said, smiling but with that now-familiar sharp edge in her voice. “Don’t you, Lizzie?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “It won’t kill you to miss one Saturday,” Mrs. Porter said to Chloe. “You’re smart, you can figure it out without Mel and Junie. We’ll go to the cider mill.”

  They gave me one of Lizzie’s jackets to wear, and together we left the house. Walking outside, I gulped fresh air. It tasted so good. My first non-basement, non-house air in nearly a month. I drank it in, blinking at the bright light. My eyes hurt to look at the sky. I was like a cave creature, dragged out of the darkness.

  This was my first time seeing the house from the outside: a small saltbox with silvery shingles, white shutters, and a dark green door. There was a brick chimney, and tidy curtains hung at every window. It looked nice. No one would ever guess it was a house of horrors. Now that I was out, I vowed I would never go back inside.

  I wouldn’t. No matter what, I would never return to that basement. The old Lonergan spirit rippled through me, made my blood race and my muscles come to life. My legs felt like springs. Before the end of the day, I would escape. Whatever it takes, I told myself. That was my mantra and battle cry. Whatever it takes, whatever it takes, Faugh a Ballagh, Emily. Emily, not Lizzie.

  As I got into the Porters’ minivan, I glanced next door. The large house was as ramshackle as it had seemed at my first impression, with a fading grandeur—it belonged, or had once belonged, to someone important. It loomed over the hedge between its yard and the Porters’. The Porters’ house was tiny in comparison. White paint had weathered down to the bare wood, and there were slate tiles missing from the mansard roof. A second-floor shutter creaked in the wind. Even the beehives looked forlorn. I looked for the boy, but he wasn’t there.

  I wanted to scream for help, but this wasn’t the right place anyway. I needed to get farther away from this spot, where I would somehow gain the advantage, where I could run to the police so they could warn my mother before Mrs. Porter could reach her.

  Chloe and I sat in the back seat. This was the minivan they’d driven when they’d kidnapped me. Now I was riding in it as if it were normal. My hands were not tied, I wasn’t drugged. My heart jumped so hard, I was worried they’d hear it banging in my chest, my breath coming fast, as if I’d just run the fifty-yard dash.

  Mr. Porter was right: Many of the branches were bare, and most of the remaining leaves were brown. But every so often we’d spy a tendril of woodbine holding on to the last of its scarlet leaves, and Mrs. Porter would cry out with joy, and we’d pull over to gather a few. These roads were twisty and deserted, lined with stone walls and the occasional farmhouse. I held my breath, wanting to open the door and tumble out, run away, but I knew I had to bide my time.

  A few miles later, we pulled into the parking lot of Jeb’s Olde Cider Mill, a big red barn surrounded by hundreds of pumpkins and baskets of gourds. As soon as I stepped out of the car, I smelled apples. I heard the grinding of the press, extracting juice from cartloads of Macoun and McIntosh apples.

  The Porters barely kept their eyes on me. They must have been confident no one would recognize Emily Lonergan with her hair dyed black, blue eyes hidden behind green contacts, a mole drawn on her cheek. Mr. Porter wandered over to a display of apple wine and maple syrup. Chloe stuck close to me. She grabbed a box of fudge and another of maple sugar molded into the shape of jack-o’-lanterns. Employees wore khaki jackets with Jeb’s patches on the chest.

  I tried to catch the eye of a woman handing out cups of hot cider, but she was talking to a couple. I overheard them say they were from Kentucky, meandering through New England on vacation. This would be the place to yell. I wouldn’t even have to run—people would
surround me to find out what was wrong.

  And there he was—the boy who had been on the porch next door. Today his dark blond hair was tied back with a leather cord, a few strands falling into his face, and he wore a brown canvas jacket. He was with three other kids, all of them wandering past the crates of apples, drinking cups of hot cider.

  One of them was a girl in a long dress, with wavy strawberry blond hair flowing almost to her waist. She laughed, a trill as pure as birdsong. Just behind them was a stocky boy with a beard and sunglasses and a dark-haired boy wearing a cap that said MARTIN GUITAR.

  “Oh, look, it’s Casey,” Chloe said.

  The boy with the dark blond hair must have heard his name because he turned and waved. He left his friends and walked toward us.

  “Hi, Chloe,” he said.

  “How’s it going?” she asked.

  “Saturday at the cider mill,” he said. “Life is good, right?”

  “Pretty much,” she said.

  He smiled. His eyes were turquoise and cloudy. His lashes were so long they brushed his cheeks when he blinked. But it was the color and opacity of his eyes that mesmerized me.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “I bet I know who you are,” he said.

  “You do?” I practically died then and there. Had he seen the news stories? Unconsciously I touched my dyed hair—could he look right through the disguise and see who I really was?

  “Please, you’ve got to …” I began, instantly grabbing for what felt like my best and last opportunity, my heart smashing through my ribs, when I felt sharp fingers grip my shoulder.

  “I see you’ve found our neighbor,” Mrs. Porter said, smiling warmly. “Casey Donoghue, meet my daughter Lizzie.”

  “I knew it had to be you,” Casey said. “Home from Europe. How was it?”

  “Europe?” I asked.

  “I told Casey and his dad all about your semester as an exchange student,” Mrs. Porter said. “How badly we missed you but how we absolutely could not deny you that once-in-a-lifetime chance.”