The Blurry Years

by Eleanor Kriseman

  When I got home, I erased the message on the answering machine, climbed into bed, and fell asleep. I woke to my mom standing over me. “I’m going to Daryl’s for dinner. You comin’?” I slipped into my sandals and followed her out the door and downstairs to the parking lot.

  It was hard to remember the times before Daryl had been around, back when my mom was dating Bruce. Now Daryl was over or my mom was at his place or we were all there. Daryl’s trailer was much smaller than our apartment, which wasn’t big. I didn’t know you could fit a life into a place that small. His younger brother Marcus lived with him, but he didn’t make much money, my mom said, so he had to sleep on the couch. It was supposed to be temporary but he’d been there ever since my mom started dating Daryl and it didn’t seem like that was changing anytime soon.

  Daryl played drums in a band, the kind of band that played at weddings. They did other shows where they played their own music, but those were usually free. His arm muscles were huge from lifting his drum kit in and out of the pickup truck. My mom liked to wrap both of her tiny hands around his biceps and say, “Flex.” Then she’d smile like she was proud of him, but also like she was proud of herself.

  There was a grimy fish tank in the trailer, on the table by the couch where I sat with Marcus while Daryl and my mom fought in the bedroom. You shouldn’t have driven over like that, he said, and she said, I just had a beer to relax after work; it’s not a big deal. He said, But Callie is in that car with you. You just don’t think sometimes.

  Instead of listening to them I tuned out and listened to the water trickling into the fish tank. It sounded like trying to pee in the middle of the night, when only a little bit comes out at a time. Marcus’s sheets were bunched up in a corner of the couch. My mom and Daryl got louder, and Marcus said, “Let’s go outside.” I didn’t talk to Marcus that much, but he was always nice to me.

  My mom’s face was stony when they finally emerged. She swung the door hard, but Daryl caught it before it slammed. I was propped on the edge of the truck bed with the back flap folded down, swinging out my newly smooth legs to kick Marcus, because I felt like kicking something, but only softly. I also wanted someone to notice. The mosquitoes were humming around my thighs, whining and buzzing close to my ears.

  I sat on my mom’s lap in the front of the truck, seatbelt stretched over us both. Marcus didn’t come. Sometimes he rode his motorcycle with us and sometimes he stayed home. We were just picking up pizza from Little Caesars, anyway. All four of us ate outside, on the picnic table that swayed whenever anyone stood up.

  When my mom and Daryl started arguing again, Marcus got up and motioned for me to come with him. He took me around to the back of the trailer and showed me the ladder that led to the roof. I’d never seen the ladder before. The rubber coating on the roof was smudged and dirty, but Marcus lay down on it, so I did too. “Look up,” he said. There were hardly any trees in the park, and no big buildings close by. “The sky is so clear tonight. You can see Venus. There!” he said, and pointed to a brighter dot in the sky, sounding more excited than I’d ever heard him before. I didn’t know much about Marcus even though it felt like we’d known him and Daryl forever. He didn’t talk much, except for when his girlfriend Kelly was over. But while my mom and Daryl fought, the sound of their voices but not the words themselves carrying up to the roof, Marcus showed me constellations, drew his finger in the air and made imaginary lines so I could understand how every star connected. We stayed up there until we couldn’t hear them anymore.

  Back at our apartment later that night, I sat on the lid of the toilet and ran a finger lightly from my ankle to my thigh. My mom hadn’t asked about school. I climbed onto the lid, high enough to see my legs in the mirror, and executed a shaky twirl, eyes glued to my reflection. Tanya and Jeremy’s apartment felt like a dream, or a memory from years ago. In bed, I slid my frictionless legs back and forth, back and forth, under the blankets. I swam between the sheets. I fell asleep on my back, trying to burn the image of the night sky into my head.

  04

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Marcus and Kelly after that night. Kelly was a hostess at the restaurant he managed. She wore her hair in a French braid like it was part of the uniform. The morning after I’d met Kelly for the first time, I’d tried to teach myself how to French braid using a makeup mirror angled to face the bathroom mirror so that I could see my handiwork from the back. I couldn’t get all the wisps from the front to stay in the braid, and I took it out before I left for school.

  Kelly always looked like she’d come straight from work, and mostly she had, in her black skirt and button-down, and she always smelled faintly of garlic, complaining about it as if it were much worse than it was, laughing about how she’d have to shower before they went out if they decided to go to a bar after dinner. Just like so many of the other women I knew, I wanted to be like her, but Kelly I wanted to be like because I couldn’t figure her out.

  Maybe it was the way Marcus reacted to her. He didn’t talk much in general, but around Kelly he was chatty, he made jokes, he put his hand on her shoulders or knees when they were really into a conversation. But when he did it, it didn’t seem like they were about to kiss or anything. It just made me feel like maybe I hadn’t understood what they were talking about, after all. Like there was another layer to the conversation I couldn’t yet unlock, something that would come—when? When I was a little older? I wanted to know it now. I got straight As in school. I knew what all the words they were using meant, or most of them, anyway. But it was like you got to be a certain age and then you could say something that sounded normal to everyone else in the room and became a secret code to the person you really wanted to be talking to. I sensed it, but I didn’t know how it worked.

  It was different than the way my mom and Daryl talked. I knew when they were trying to keep something from me—they were sloppy, loopy, laughing hard or, worse, doing that whisper-shout thing that was more frightening than an actual fight. My mom and Daryl always sounded like they had something to prove to each other, like every conversation was something you had to win, points you racked up to use against the other person later on. Listening to Marcus talk was different.

  Dinner had been fun until suddenly it wasn’t anymore. Marcus had brought aluminum trays of lasagna and spaghetti and Caesar salads from work, soda in Styrofoam cups. Daryl bought beer and we brought rum from home and Kelly was there too, even though she hadn’t brought anything. I ate until my stomach hurt. I loved lasagna. The bottle of rum had been half-empty when we brought it over, and both Kelly and my mom had been pouring it into their Styrofoam cups all through dinner. So I wasn’t surprised when my mom tipped the bottle over her cup again and poured out the last of it. She raised her eyebrows. “Well, we sure made quick work of that,” she said.

  “Probably a good time to switch to beer, anyway,” Daryl said, beginning to stand up. “Here, I’ll get you one.” I could see what he was trying to do but I knew it wouldn’t work. I knew better than he did just how stubborn she could be.

  “The liquor store’s just a couple minutes away,” she said, trying to make her voice calmer than she felt, her clenched jaw giving her away. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Really, Jeanne, we’re good for tonight,” Daryl said.

  “It’s my fucking weekend tomorrow and I’m going to enjoy it,” she said back to him, as if they were the only two people at the table. “Anyone need anything while I’m out?” She got up and started walking fast to the car. Daryl followed right behind her.

  A couple minutes later, she peeled out of the parking lot, Daryl in the passenger seat. She’d won this time.

  Marcus stood up, putting the tops back on the half-eaten trays of food, gathering our plates and napkins into an uneven stack. “Be right back,” he said, and walked inside. Kelly followed after him.

  I sat alone at the table for a minute, then decided to bring in the rest of the trash from the table. Kelly had left the door ajar, which I noted
with a little satisfaction. Mosquitoes got in when you left the door open. I always closed the door. Before I could push it open further to go inside, I heard Kelly’s voice, whiny and insistent, and I froze right where I was. “Come on,” she said. “Your brother’s gone. We have time.”

  Marcus sighed. “I was just bringing in the dishes,” he said. “Let’s go back outside.”

  “You sure?” Kelly asked, dragging out that last word in a way that made me uncomfortable. She giggled.

  “Kelly, you know I want to,” he said. “Not now. We can’t just leave Cal out there alone.”

  “You shouldn’t have to be responsible for her,” Kelly said.

  “Yeah, well,” Marcus said. “Someone should be. And it’s not her mom, that’s for sure.” I blushed, stinging with embarrassment, but a small thrill ran through me at the thought of Marcus taking care of me.

  I kept listening, but neither of them spoke for a minute. Then, before I could move, Kelly pulled open the door and almost walked straight into me. “I was just bringing these in,” I said quickly, but she didn’t look at me like I’d been eavesdropping. It was as if I couldn’t have even understood their conversation, as if I were just a child, too young and dumb to even worry about revealing anything in front of.

  05

  The gas station bathrooms were always open, but if it wasn’t the middle of the night and we had a choice, I liked Dunkin’ Donuts better. The bathrooms there were cleaner and, if I crossed my legs and sort of hopped around, the people behind the counter would usually let me use it even if we didn’t buy anything. If we stopped for the night, we looked for a 7-Eleven, or someplace else that was always open, because it was safer to park there. My mom would only sleep at night if she thought it was safe. Sometimes we drove all night and parked during the day. She’d sleep then, but I never could, even with a blanket over my face to block out the light.

  If my mom was in a good mood when we passed a Welcome sign, she’d pull over so I could stand beneath it. The signs were always much bigger than I expected them to be when I got up close. Welcome to Ocala. Welcome to Gainesville. Welcome—’We’re Glad Georgia’s On Your Mind, with a giant peach in the corner. That was the first state line. Back in Florida, she pulled over at the sign for the Suwannee River so I could look over the railing at the water. It made me dizzy; the river was a long way down.

  We were headed to Oregon to stay with my grandma June for a little while. That was all I knew.

  I kept asking questions at first. “Why do we have to pack so quickly?” “Why aren’t we saying goodbye to anyone?” “What about school?” I stopped asking when she wouldn’t answer. We were both quiet for a long time.

  The only time I complained was on that stretch of highway after Nashville when we’d just passed the rest stop and the AC had switched off again and wouldn’t turn back on even when I hit the dashboard and I kept asking her to turn around so I could use the bathroom but she wouldn’t turn around and instead she pulled over and made me pee in the sawgrass on the side of I-24. When I got back in the car, still damp between my legs because we didn’t have any toilet paper, I said, “I wish we’d never left home.”

  “Me too,” she said, and turned up the radio.

  It was weird how looking out the window of a moving car made me forget about a lot of things. I barely thought about my friends. I’d had plans to walk to Falk’s with Shauna later that week to buy a new pair of sandals. I barely thought about starting seventh grade, even though that was all that me and Shauna could talk about before we left. Every time something like that popped into my head all I had to do was stare out the window for a little bit and it would just float out again. The only thoughts that stuck were the ones of home. My mom and Daryl at the kitchen counter, a bottle of anything between them, hysterical with laughter over something I pretended to understand. The frayed, pilling fabric of the couch that I picked at absentmindedly while watching television. The ceilings that looked like popcorn somebody had painted over. No matter how fast everything was going by outside the window, those thoughts didn’t go away.

  She’d switched on my light, grabbed my suitcase from under the bed, and started pulling clothes from my dresser before I’d even sat up. “What’s going on?” I asked, narrowing my eyes against the sudden brightness. She was drunk. Ever since the Fourth of July when she’d drifted off at the wheel, she hadn’t been drinking, at least not around me. But that night she was drunk.

  “Take your favorite things,” she said, tugging hard on the bottom drawer of the dresser, the one that always stuck. “We’ll come back for the rest later. Just take what you want. Quick.” The drawer came unstuck, sending her stumbling backward. I was half-asleep and obedient, and filled the suitcase easily. Tank tops. My white denim shorts. A soft, old shirt of Daryl’s that my mom used to sleep in. Underwear. Flip-flops. My copy of Bridge to Terabithia, page folded down to mark my place, which was chapters ahead of where I was supposed to be for summer reading. It was funny, the things I chose to bring, the things I forgot. I brought my toothbrush, as if that were something expensive and irreplaceable. I forgot my friendship necklace—the golden ‘BEST’ to Shauna’s ‘FRIENDS,’ with the chain that turned my neck green if I wore it for too long.

  My mom stabbed at the ignition with the key until she finally managed to get it in. I almost asked her if she needed help but she drove carefully and we didn’t go far, just to the IHOP near the interstate. I ate French toast like a robot while she drank a whole pot of coffee and ordered a refill. We stayed until the waitress started wiping the table to move us along, and by then my mom had pretty much sobered up because she didn’t ask me to do the tip.

  When we walked back out to the car, I noticed the bumper was slightly askew. The glass casing around the right headlight had been shattered.

  “What happened?” I asked, pointing.

  “Nothing,” she said, staring at the car, tilting her head the same way as the bumper. “Nothing happened. Try to sleep in the car. It’s late.”

  Daryl wasn’t with us, which was weird. My mom was always with him. But she always spent the night at home, even if she got back really late. We had barbecues a lot at Daryl’s place. I would sit on Daryl’s bench press machine, part of the outdoor gym he’d put together by scouting out the alleys of the rich neighborhoods on trash nights. He told that story a lot. I’d lean against the metal bar that rose from the bench and fiddle with the screws that held it together while I watched the men light the grill and the women unfold card tables on the patchy grass, setting out sliced watermelon and pasta salad and pitchers of sweet tea.

  Memorial Day had been the best. I’d seen my mom walk up behind Daryl while he was turning the hotdogs and put her arms around his waist and settle into his body; and instead of getting mad at her for surprising him, Daryl leaned into her and smiled. In the flickering light from the grill, they’d looked like something I wanted to take a picture of.

  Fourth of July had been the worst. I’d been excited to wear my new shorts—red and white stripes on one side, blue with white stars on the other—but they were made of that spandex denim that stretched out so much I had to keep hiking up the waistband to keep them in place. Mom had on a black halter top and lipstick the exact color of pink in the Baskin-Robbins logo. I thought she looked good. So did Daryl. When we got there, he looped an arm around her waist and told her so. But Daryl must have thought Charlene, who was a hostess at the Italian place Marcus managed, looked good too, because I saw him walk up next to her, telling her how much he loved her Coca-Cola cake, his flimsy paper plate buckling under the weight of the food he’d piled on, baked beans slipping off the side and onto the dirt. I walked over to Daryl and Charlene and swiveled my foot back and forth in front of them, making an indentation in the ground. Daryl didn’t even notice as I kicked the spilled beans into the hole and covered them with the dirt.

  When my mom came back outside with a new coat of lipstick and another red plastic cup full of punch, she saw Dary
l leaning into Charlene’s story and she grabbed his arm and dragged him behind the neighbor’s place. Charlene shrugged her shoulders at Desiree, who was unwrapping packets of sparklers for the little kids. “I’m not gettin’ messed up in all that,” she said, hands to her chest, palms facing out.

  From next door, my mom’s voice grew louder and louder until I heard the crack of an open palm on skin, then she came running for me. I’d been excited about climbing up to the roof of the trailer to watch the fireworks, but she grabbed my arm just like she’d grabbed his and speed-walked me to the car. It wasn’t even all the way dark yet. On the drive home, I flicked the lock on the passenger-side door up and down until I noticed we were drifting across the centerline.

  I grabbed the wheel and jerked the car back into the lane, steering the rest of the way home while my mom worked the gas and brakes. I pinched her arm every once in a while to make sure she didn’t close her eyes again. In bed later, I realized there had been no red mark on my mom’s face, no handprint. She had slapped Daryl.

  The next morning, she came into my room and crawled into bed with me just as the sky was getting light. “Do you think I’m a bad mom?” she asked. I was facing the wall; she was spooning me, still wearing last night’s outfit. Her breath was hot on my neck, and I could smell vomit under the minty scent of her mouthwash.

  “No,” I said after a minute and I meant it, but I knew I should have said it quicker.

  In Missouri, my mom decided we had enough money to spend the night at a motel. Just one night. I was so happy to sleep in a real bed. As soon as we got to the room I flopped onto it, the bedspread rough against my bare legs, and turned on the television. I was desperate for something familiar. My mom switched it off.