by Joshua Furst
Maybe he'd already pounded on the door, back when it had been just Cheryl and Jarod in the room. “Jay, I fucking know you're in there. Fucking let me in.” And Jarod, terrified, had shouted back, “Go away, Trent. Just leave. I can't talk to you now.” He'd opened the door a crack, pulled the chain taut and peered, one frightened eye framed by slabs of wood. Cheryl lay there limply as Trent's voice shot toward her—“Just let me fucking in, fucking what the fuck, Jay?”—piercing her, or not, she was too numb to tell. “What the fuck,” he kept saying. “What the fuck, man. I can see my fucking girlfriend through the window, dick.” Then he started slamming his shoulder into the door, rearing back and smashing and rearing back again. “Let me the fuck in! I'll fucking kill you, Jay!”
The house was cheap wood—it came from a box—and with each blow from Trent, it shook on its frame. Jarod tried his best, he shoved back, he braced himself, timing his motions in opposition to Trent's, pushing and pushing until the latch clicked. He slid lock after lock after lock into place.
That's when his mom finally pulled herself from bed. She slipped a rank t-shirt over her head and wedged herself into a pair of sweatpants. Her hair all a jumble, she limped into the living room. It took her just a second to see what had happened: Jarod slumped by the door, head buried in his knees, Cheryl still splayed out, watching things that weren't there. Though Trent had stopped pummeling his fists into the house, he was still outside, squatting in the dirt. It was a typical scene, one she'd been through before how many hundreds of times with that nothing of a man, Jarod's father.
The ho-bag understood. She knew what to do.
Pulling herself past my daughter's shattered form, she hobbled to the door, nudged her son out of the way. She unlatched the locks and stepped out of the house. She stood over Trent. She watched him pick at the grass. She waited.
Trent might not have respected his elders, but he was scared of them; he was scared of what they represented.
“You done yet?” she asked him. “I can wait all day. Why don't you just let me know when you're done?”
He gazed at her, embarrassment eating at his will, and eventually, defeated, he stood up. His machismo had wilted. For a moment, he was just a gangly kid again. A bad attitude bottled in a dirty face. He slunk off to lick his wounds and she went back inside.
Now, she was ready for him, waiting for his return. As Jarod scurried around Rainbow Foods, unloading boxes of pears and zucchini, and Cheryl continued her numb vigil on the couch, she was doing the thing mothers are supposed to do, attending and enduring and keeping a close watch, preparing to sacrifice whatever it took to ensure that the child was safe.
But instead of Trent, it was me coming this time.
I'd have to thank her. I'd have to stand before her in my shame and allow her to revel in her pride and disgust. This was the price I'd pay to get my daughter back.
And what if Trent was still there, waiting down the street, sitting on the curb, hiding behind a bush? I'd have to be prepared for this possibility too. I imagined Cheryl huddled under my shoulder, her head buried like a perp walking past a camera. We'd race from the house to my open car door, slam ourselves in, hit the locks and roar off. Trent's rocks would fly past us. They'd zing off the bumper, the hatch, maybe shatter a brake light, but I'd get her away. Speeding, running stop signs, I'd get her away.
Instead of going home, we'd head west toward St. Cloud. We'd stick to the back roads and as we shot through Willmar we'd flip it the bird. We'd keep going past all those monotonous fields of corn until we made our way into North Dakota. Then we'd veer up toward Canada. We'd cross the border, and still we'd keep going, through Manitoba, past Winnipeg, into Saskatchewan and north toward the Arctic. We'd get lost in the tundra, where nobody knew us, where the only wolves we'd hear howling in the night were the kind that walked on four legs.
I drove around for hours searching for Jarod's house. I refused to give up. If I did, I knew, all the things Cheryl believed about me would turn out to be true.
Running low on gas, I pulled into an Exxon station. A rusted-out station wagon with a handicapped sign hanging from its mirror was parked near the mini-mart's entrance. I kept my eye on it as I filled up. Not wanting to cause a scene, I paid at the pump and pulled across the street where I could be more discreet.
The station wagon's owner was a withered woman, maybe forty, but roughly aged so she looked much older. Her blond hair was in tangles and she'd wrapped herself in purple Vikings sweatpants and a windbreaker she'd earned with Marlboro Miles. She walked with a four-footed orthopedic cane, and in her free hand, she carried a bag full of junk food. Jarod's mother. It couldn't have been anyone else. Her left leg, not her right leg, was the one with problems, but still.
I trailed her around a corner, past a small playground and a Lutheran church, until she pulled into the driveway of a cramped Sears house with an enclosed porch. Unkempt hedges lined the perimeter, and broken flower boxes were mounted under the windows. The lawn had been strangled by crabgrass.
Parking, again some distance down the block, I watched Jarod's mother pull herself from the car.
It was all I could do not to jump out and accost her. I had to make sure she understood I was harmless, that I wasn't another maniac like Trent. She was going to be overprotective of Cheryl, and I'd have to show her I was capable, a levelheaded, reasonable adult. My thought was to wait until she was settled inside, then ring the doorbell like a normal person. We'd work things out calmly.
She rummaged in the back of her station wagon for a while, pushing cardboard boxes and water jugs around and pulling out giant, overstuffed Target bags. Given the pain her leg was causing her, she moved with remarkable agility. She favored her good leg, but she was self-sufficient, not once calling inside for Jarod's help.
After she slammed the hatch shut, she paused and glared at me. I waved at her. Then when she refused to stop glaring, I grabbed my purse in case she demanded ID and headed over to talk to her.
“Hi,” I said, waving again, awkwardly. “I'm Julia.” She was wary, unwilling to give me anything. “Cheryl's mom?” I said.
“I'll tell you right now,” she said, “if you're a Jehovah or some kind of God thumper, you can turn around and get right back in that car. And I don't need any Tupperware, either. You can just go right on back where you came from.”
“I'm Cheryl's mom,” I said again. “I'm here to take her home.”
“I don't give a flying shit what you are. I'm not blind. I know you've been following me.” She pulled out a cell phone held together with electrical tape, and waving it in my face, she said, “I'll have you know I've got the cops on speed dial.”
“I don't think you understand,” I said. “I'm Cheryl's mother. Cheryl. Betty. Jarod's friends all call her Betty.”
“I don't know any Cheryl Bettys.”
“The girl you've got in there.”
“There's no girl in there.”
The severity of Jarod's mother's attitude made me feel tainted, like I deserved to be despised, and the urge to justify myself was overwhelming. “I handled things badly. I'm sorry. I'm more sorry than I've ever been in my life. I'm going to be better now. I'll do what it is I need to. I'll take the medication. Just let me have her, please. Then I'll leave you alone.”
When I tried to touch her arm and reinforce my sincerity, she flailed away. “I don't know what you're talking about, lady, but you need to go now.”
“I will. I promise. Just give me Cheryl back. Then we'll both be out of your hair forever.”
“Look.” She brandished the phone again. “I'm pushing the buttons. The cops are gonna come and they're gonna lock you up.” But she didn't push the buttons. Instead, she grinned wickedly.
“I just want my daughter.”
“There is no daughter here. I live alone.”
“No, you don't! You're Jarod's mother. Trent's friend Jarod.”
“I don't know any Jarod. Scoot along, now,” she said, flapping her fingers.
Her whole body was angled away from me. I repelled her. She was bitter, hateful. She'd given up on the possibility of goodness. “Go!” She was ruthless and I suddenly had to pee.
“Why are you lying to me?!” I screamed. “Why is everybody always lying to me?!” Then realizing what I must look like to her, I said, much more calmly, “Maybe his name's not Jarod, but you've got a son, right?”
A hesitation, and then she said, “Yes.”
“And he's friends with my daughter. She ran away from home. Cheryl. She came here last night. She was scared. A short girl, with green or purple or some color in her hair. And she was drunk. She's got a pierced nose too. And lip. And a big ugly tattoo sort of right here on her forearm. I'm her mother. I really am. Here's my license to prove it. I want to take her home. That's all. Please.” I sobbed. “Please.”
“Listen to me, lady. I've got two sons. Roger's in Iraq with the Army Reserve and Karl lives out by Lacrosse, Wisconsin. You need to go find somebody else to bother.”
“No! That's not true! That's completely not true!”
“Go on. Off my yard.”
The cell phone still cocked in her fist, she looped her forearm through the handles of her bags and began leapfrogging them toward the house.
“Let me help you.” I lunged for her bags, but she twisted them away and swung them haphazardly, like weapons, at me. They pulled her off balance and she fell backward. Her phone went skidding across the driveway. I tried to help her, but she jabbed her cane at me. “Don't you touch me,” she said, kicking, dragging herself away.
There was terror on her face and I understood then that she hadn't been lying to me at all. And if she wasn't lying—if I was wrong— how much of the rest of what I knew was wrong too? Again, for the I-don't-know-how-many-thousandth time, I succumbed to the pressure. I couldn't trust myself. I couldn't trust my mind.
See, here's where my story begins to fall apart. The things I suspect and the things I believe and the things I try to tell myself must be true shatter against all the things I'm afraid of, the unspeakable things I refuse to imagine.
I backed away.
I left.
I did the only thing I knew how to do. I called Robert and asked him to save me again.
SOMETIMES, WHEN CHERYL was a very small child, I'd wake in the night knowing she'd had a nightmare. I'd run to her room and arrive before she started screaming. By the time her tears came, I'd be holding her head, smoothing the thin hair along her temples. Her eyes would burst wide open and she'd see my face.
“It's you!” she'd say.
“It's me. I chased the monsters away.”
During the three months I was in the hospital, before Cheryl ran off to wherever she went, Dr. Rahajafeeli had me on a cycle of Risperdal and Trazodone. The Trazodone turned my dreams into swirling epic sagas—dreams that cycled through multiple story lines where the ground would fall away or I'd open a door and I'd slip into new, unrelated, frightening scenarios. And Cheryl would be there, lingering just outside of my vision, watching me stumble through dungeon after dungeon. She held a mirror in her hand, and when I was in trouble, she'd raise it above her head, bending the light toward me. This time it was her chasing my monsters away.
Halfway through my stay, Robert brought her to visit me. He waited in a chair in the twelve-foot span of hallway on the other side of the ward's locked door so she could see me alone. I don't know what he told her to expect, but she looked stricken—brow furrowed with tension, arms clutched tight around herself—as she was being buzzed in.
People here didn't get visitors too often and some of the other patients in the ward were curious about her. They sat on the molded red and blue plastic chairs chained to the walls, or peered out from behind the doorways of their rooms: Raymond, who'd only recently been homeless—his hands shook and his face was nicked with cuts from when they'd shaved him. Trish, prim in her gleaming gold patent leather shoes, so ominous under her hospital gown. And Kim, and Pablo with the bandages on his wrists, and Terrance and Lewis and Sam. And Rachael, who thought she was Joan of Arc, and Dylan, not much older than Cheryl herself, who looked perfectly normal until you noticed the hundreds of small round scabs—crusty and angry—from where he'd pressed lit cigarettes into his skin attempting to kill the ants he'd seen crawling there. While I led Cheryl past them, she held her head stiff, like a dog with a cone latched around its neck.
Ward rules dictated that doors remain open throughout the day, and the more skittish patients had nowhere to hide. They cowered on their beds or at the small blond desks under their windows. They were as scared of her as she was of them.
We were almost at my room when Peter Langenfelt, tall and way too skinny, wandered toward us. He held his weight low and even, which made him look like he was gliding. Stopping in front of us, he leaned forward on stiff knees and scrutinized Cheryl. She flinched, catching herself before she recoiled, and strained her lips into a tight smile.
“Blessed,” said Peter. “Walk in peace.” His hair was dirty, feathered down the middle. It hung in his eyes and tumbled over his shoulders.
“Cheryl,” I said, “this is Peter.” I held her elbow and eased her back a step. She was spooked, I could tell, and I worried that if I tried to comfort her, I'd trigger an outburst in Peter. “My daughter, Cheryl,” I told him in warning. “She's come to visit.”
“We've been waiting for you. We knew you would come,” he said. Instead of the standard pale-blue hospital gown, he wore a stained floor-length bathrobe tied shut with a sash around the waist. “So blessed and beatific. So pure and sweet,” he said.
Cheryl let him cup her hand between his palms. When he leaned in to kiss it, his sash slipped and his robe fell open. He was naked beneath it, his penis jutting out half erect, and he had her tight by the wrist.
She twisted and pulled, still trying to stay calm.
“Peter,” I said. I'd seen Dr. Rahajafeeli mollify him with this tone of voice, level and stern, somehow fixed, unquestionable. “Let us past now. We need to go to my room.”
But he held on, squeezed tighter, and Cheryl yelped in fear and suddenly two orderlies were running toward us, grabbing Peter's arms and twisting them behind his back, towing him off to lock him in his room. As the door slammed shut, he shouted, “See what you've done?!”
I wondered how she was comprehending all this, if her compassion was large enough to recognize these people—my people—as something more than other. To see them as I did. They were human beings at the edge of the dream, too wise for their own good, no longer able to fake conformity. These were the people who came to me in the night, whose voices I couldn't push out of my head. They were brave and they deserved to be treated with dignity. The thing that hurts most is other people's fear.
“Okay?” I said.
She nodded. She didn't look at me.
Placing a palm lightly on the small of her back, I tried to make a joke. “Welcome to my world,” I said. It didn't get a smile.
When we reached my room, I sank onto the bed. “This is a hard place.”
“I know,” she said.
“The people here—”
“I know, Mom.”
Finally, she looked at me. She wouldn't sit. She stood in front of me, scrutinizing the room, an empty box with a barred window at one end. Decorating the walls were the pictures I'd drawn, five, ten a day, with the crayons they'd given me, each one a crude portrait of her.
All the things I'd been hoping to tell her seemed stupid and obvious, trite in comparison with the broken fact of my confinement.
“I should go, Mom,” she said after a while. “Dad's out there waiting for me.”
I panicked. It seemed like something should have changed, something should have been released before her visit with me ended.
“Can—” I said. “Do you think maybe—there's a candy machine in the TV room and—but I—they don't let me have any money. You don't think, could you maybe give me a dollar? I've wanted a candy bar since the day I got
here.”
All I knew how to do was take from her. And this one last time, she gave me what I'd asked for. She slid a finger into the pocket of her jeans, pulled a crumpled bill out and laid it in my hand. Then she ducked away.
She didn't visit again.
Where is she now? She might be huddled on a sidewalk somewhere, in some distant downtown, alone, covered in soot, trying to scare up enough change for one more stab at oblivion.
It doesn't matter.
I try not to wonder.
Sometimes I think maybe she'll show up in Plymouth and knock at my door. She'll say, “Mom, I'm not afraid. I know who I am now. I can care for you.”
I know that's not true, though. I understand what happened. Searching for a way not to become me, she followed her black flag over the edge of the earth. She's never coming back.
Thanks are due to the MacDowell Colony, Ledig House/Art Omi, and the Joanne Frank Home for Impoverished Writers, where much of this novel was written and rewritten.
To Lisa Dierbeck, Gordon Haber, Mike Heppner and Jeremy Mullem, who read drafts of this book with much-needed critical insight; to Elizabeth Senja Spackman, whose memory of the Minneapolis streets proved essential; and especially to Ben Schrank and Elizabeth Weinstein, who indulgently allowed me to show them every, sometimes unreadable, version of the work in progress.
To Richard Abate, who protects me.
And to Gary Fisketjon and Liz Van Hoose, as well as the rest of the staff at Knopf; a writer couldn't ask for a more supportive team.
A NOTE ON THE TYPE
This book was set in Albertina, the best known of the typefaces designed by Chris Brand (b. 1921 in Utrecht, the Netherlands). Issued by the Monotype Corporation in 1965, Albertina was one of the first text fonts made solely for photocomposition. It was used to catalog the work of Stanley Morison and was exhibited in Brussels at the Albertina Library in 1966.
Composed by Creative Graphics,
Allentown, Pennsylvania
