Family

by Caroline Leavitt

  She had never hitched before and she had a feeling that maybe she wasn’t doing it right. She tried to keep her stance loose and confident and tough, and she tried to look so pretty, a driver couldn’t help but slow down. Once, when she was still going with Rick, when they were eating lunch behind the vocational school, she had overheard some of the vocational girls talking about hitching, idly discussing what they would and wouldn’t do. You wouldn’t get into a car with more than one guy; you had to check for door handles on the insides before you got in; and it was a good idea to lean in just enough to sniff out any alcohol scenting the air. No old cars; no real new cars, either, because that could mean someone so rich they might feel they could do whatever they wanted. Matronly women were good; girls your own age; truck drivers, who could be counted on not only to be polite but to buy you dinner at a truck stop. The girls had told a few horror stories, but Robin discarded those now; she still thought nothing bad could ever happen to her.

  A car whizzed by her, slowed for a moment, and she saw a red glove suddenly poke out the window and beckon to her. She raced toward it, but just as she got to the door, just as she was about to peer in, the car suddenly jolted ahead, speeding, leaving her standing in the road, her hand outstretched.

  Her first ride was from a middle-aged man in a green suit. There were handles on all the doors, he smelled only of lime aftershave, and for the whole two hours he drove without once touching her. He sneaked anxious peaks at her, though, and when he spoke, he called her “princess.” Then, abruptly, he asked if she knew what fellatio meant, and Robin sat up straight in her seat. She started gauging the hurt she’d endure if she leaped from the car, but then he said kindly that it was understandable that a young girl like her might not know, and he said it meant when a woman goes down on a man. “You know what that means, going down?” he asked, and then he said that he meant sucking cock. “The woman takes the penis right into her mouth. No teeth, though,” he said. “She has to kind of tuck them away.” Robin put her hand on the door, but he just switched on the radio and started to hum. He never asked her another question, he never did anything more than hum, and when he left her off, he told her she was a very nice girl. He smiled. And he waved at her when he drove off.

  By the time the next ride came, she was so cold she just got in without checking faces or door handles. She got ride after ride, from women who lectured her about Richard Speck and the nine nurses, and once from a girl only a little older than she herself was, who told Robin about a maniac loose who liked to cut off the nipples of young girls and keep them preserved in solution in his trunk.

  Some of the rides were pleasant. A woman bought her soup and a sandwich at a diner, insisting that she was hungry herself and that it was up to Robin whether she ate or waited inside a frosty car. A trucker brought her to his home, a split-level with red-white-and-blue shag carpeting. His wife gave Robin hot cocoa with marshmallows dotting into foam, and a grilled cheese sandwich, while he made a few phone calls. “It isn’t safe, what you’re doing,” the trucker’s wife told Robin. She wanted her to call home and get the first bus back. “Oh, it’s all right, I’m invincible,” Robin said.

  “Nobody’s that,” said the wife.

  Robin climbed back into the truck and slept while he drove her the rest of the way to Boston. By the time they arrived, the air was dusky, and she felt a little disoriented, homesick for something familiar.

  She knew the name of Nick’s hotel, and she asked a few people for directions. It startled her, how many people were on the streets this early, how much noise. She walked past the gardens, and when she saw the swan boats, she got a small, sharp thrill. But when she got to them, the man told her they weren’t open yet; he said to come back in a few hours. Everything felt so different here. The people seemed to be harboring some secret knowledge she didn’t know how to access, and she felt unsure and out of place.

  She took her time walking to her father’s hotel. She practiced in her mind how he might take her visit. He’d finally share the wonders of one of his cities with her. He’d be delighted. He’d swoop her off to dinner, take her to a mall or whatever they had here and buy her a dress to wear. Or maybe, maybe he’d be furious. Maybe he’d make her call Leslie and apologize. She’d get yelled at in stereo, but then the squall would flutter away and she’d still be here in this wondrous city with her father, on her way out to eat. Maybe, too, she would end up here when she went to college, and then he’d be the one to visit her, he’d be the one missing her because she just wasn’t at home anymore.

  “Hey, bright eyes,” someone said, and, startled, she dipped her head. “Hey, pretty bitty,” the voice said, and she strode past, not looking at the face that went with the voice. She remembered Rick’s stories about big cities. Women walking past men who would spit beer into their hair. Things falling from windows—shopping carts weighted with bricks. A woman in the subway screaming because someone had thrown a bag of manure on her, no one even able to get close enough to help because of the stench. Robin shook the images away; she reminded herself just who she was, just what could and could not hurt her.

  She was on Tremont Street, waiting for the light to change, pressed into a crowd so she could barely move, when there, across the street, she spotted her father. She elbowed forward a little. Someone cursed and pushed her back. “Jesus, are you out of your mind?” a woman said to her. “You can get killed on these streets crossing at the lights, let alone against them.”

  Robin, pinned into place, tried to lift one hand into a wave, tried to call out, but all the noise smothered her sound. She strained up on tiptoe, and then there was her father again, in a clearing by the park, only he wasn’t alone. He was holding someone, a woman, bending her toward him as if there were no one else on the street but the two of them, moving her into a kiss.

  Robin froze. The light clicked, the crowd moved like a tide, straining against her, but she couldn’t get her legs to work, suddenly couldn’t remember how to breathe, how to speak, how to do anything. “Move it,” someone said, jostling her, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t do anything but watch the woman peeling away from her father, lifting up to kiss him again, on his forehead, on his nose, on his mouth, long and deep. The two of them separated, as smoothly as a seam, gliding in opposite directions, and then, without thinking, Robin began to follow the woman.

  Dore was running herself a bath, sifting in rose bath salts, bubbling the water pink, when the doorbell rang. “Shit,” she said. It was only nine. She had warned Nick not to even think of calling her until ten. She needed the time to calm herself down from seeing him, to think about what it was she wanted to do about it. Every time he came back into her life, it was like an assault. She’d work herself up in knots, and then somehow he’d manage to loosen them up just by being with her. She’d get used to him again, feel the same old comfort starting to surround her like a blanket, and then he’d be gone and she’d have to pretend it wasn’t killing her, wasn’t ruining her life. The bath helped. The heat of it soaked out the lust and the need and the dreamy yearning; it let her rise up from the water like some Aphrodite reborn. She could feel alone with herself again. Alone and strong. She swished her hand in the water, lifting up bubbles, and the bell rang again.

  Let the damned thing ring. Whoever it was would get tired and go away. Or they’d phone her. Her friends knew how she was about her privacy—they could be banging at her door and she wouldn’t answer if she was reading or watching an old movie on TV. You couldn’t get her to do anything she didn’t want to. Maybe the bell wasn’t even for her. There were kids who came into the foyer to smoke dope and sometimes bumped up against a bell. Dore ruffed her hair, snapped her jeans, and then heard the buzzer downstairs, steps in the hallway, along the stairs, and finally a loud, insistent knocking at her door. Who the hell let someone in on her bell? She wiped her hands against her jeans and went to the door, wrenching it open, glaring.

  There, standing in front of her, was a young girl, her hair
wild, her face a little dirty, her hands balled into fists. Dore let out a breath. Ah, she was used to this—this was familiar. She knew the look on that face all too well, the way the body was held, the pain contorted there. She could probably repeat this girl’s story back to her, word for word. She didn’t recognize the girl, but it didn’t matter. She must be a friend of a friend of a friend of one of her old students. They all knew she wouldn’t turn them away.

  “Come on in,” she said, and the girl did.

  Dore led her into the living room and sat her down. She knew what to do. “Wait just one sec,” she said, and went into the kitchen, quickly popping tea bags into blue china cups, hurrying the water to a boil. When she came out again with two cups on a tray, balancing a plate of chocolate snaps, she smiled. She fitted one of the cups into the girl’s hand. “Are you all right?” Dore asked. The girl stayed silent, but Dore was used to that, too.

  The girl kept looking around, her face pinched and tight. Dore’s place was small, cluttered with books and photographs, snapshots taken in Woolworth’s four-for-a-dollar booth because she was too impatient to pose for a real picture. The girl got up and went to the shelf, her back to Dore. She was still for so long that finally Dore got up and lightly touched her. The girl seemed to contract. In her hand was a recent photograph of Nick, laughing into the camera. It had been taken just about a month ago, on a sunny day when they had driven out to the Cape. They were on a deserted beach, and Dore had been happy.

  “Who’s this?” the girl asked, her voice low.

  Dore started to take the photo, but the girl’s grip was strong. “Oh,” said Dore, “that’s my favorite runaway.” She smiled at the girl, who promptly burst into tears, letting the picture flutter down from her hands.

  Dore wrapped her arms about the girl and let her cry against her. It always amazed her, how easy it was to comfort a stranger, how when you had nothing to lose, you could give everything. All these young bodies somehow just fit against her. Their heads rested against her neck, their chests were so close she could feel their hearts beating right through her. God help her, but it was heady.

  Girls were the hardest for her. Sometimes, after they left, after she had helped them call their parents in another state, paying for the calls herself, after she had given advice until they smiled, after they had names and numbers of doctors tucked into their jeans, the apartment seemed so empty, it was an affront. She sometimes calculated ages. She’d think, This blonde must be twelve, the brunette, fourteen, and when they got close to the age Susan would have been, it started to hurt. She couldn’t stop herself, she felt the comparisons rising to the surface like cream. This one had hair like Susan would have had, thick and dark, pulled into a braid. This one loved to paint, the way she always imagined Susan would have. She made herself crazy with it.

  “I wish you were my mother,” girls told her. They made her a model, they loved her for the few hours they were at the house, and then they disappeared. Sometimes she got stray postcards, scribbles proclaiming that someone would never forget her, but of course the someone always, inevitably, did. The visits were always one-time, and she always felt as if she had somehow come up short, as if she had failed yet again.

  She took sleeping pills sometimes, the mild kind they sold over the counter, and as she rolled toward her dreams, she began thinking about Susan. What if she hadn’t died at all? What if she had been revived in some stark white room, kidnapped by a childless woman wandering the floors, pulled by her yearning to any small heartbeat? What if one of these girls forever showing up at her house was Susan, fully grown now, sent by fate, somehow meant to test her? Christians swore they could see Jesus in everyone. They were supposed to be kind to beggars and drunkards because anyone could be Jesus. What you do to him, you do to me. Her girls, Dore called them, her girls. Every one of them a potential Susan, a chance to make up for not having loved her enough, for not having been there to avert disaster.

  The girl moved against Dore. Dore led her to the couch and sat her down. “You cry all you need,” she said.

  The girl needed a lot. Dore sat there, her arm falling pins-and-needles asleep under the girl. This one would take some time in her telling, Dore thought.

  When the girl finally lifted her head, she looked shamed and wouldn’t meet Dore’s eyes. Dore reached out and tilted the girl’s chin up. “What could be that bad?” Dore asked.

  The girl looked angry, confused. She stood up and then sat right down again. “The man in the picture,” she said. “Who is he?”

  Boy pain, Dore thought, another open wound of the heart. “He’s an old friend,” Dore said.

  “A friend?”

  “The best kind,” Dore said. “I love him.”

  “But like a friend,” the girl said, sitting up. “You love him like a friend.”

  “Well, more than that,” Dore began, but the girl was suddenly staring at her, making her uncomfortable.

  “You know his family?” the girl said.

  “His family? No, he’s an orphan.”

  The girl started crying again, and Dore hunched toward her. “Listen, is this about a boy? Is that what’s wrong?” The girl seemed to sink down into herself. “Look, you can’t let men run you,” Dore said, then stopped, Nick’s face moving into her mind. “Right, Dore,” she said, and the girl looked up.

  “Do you want to tell me?” Dore asked.

  The girl rocked a little. “How did you meet him?”

  She’s hedging, Dore thought. “You really want to hear this? You’re sure you really wouldn’t rather be doing the telling?”

  “No,” the girl said, “I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t at all.”

  So Dore started telling stories about Nick. How they had met, how happy they had been, their life in the trailer. She didn’t talk about Susan. The girl kept looking down into her lap, threading her fingers, and then abruptly she bolted for the door.

  “Hey!” Dore cried, getting up, and the girl stopped, freeze-framed like a deer in a blinding light. Dore fished around in the end-table drawer and pulled out a pencil and some crimped paper. Smoothing it, she hastily scribbled her name and her phone. “You have a place you can stay?” she asked. The girl nodded. “Well, I’ll just write out the address of the “Y” anyhow,” Dore said. “You never know, and it’s so cheap.” She handed the paper to the girl, who slowly took it. “You call if you need to talk. Anytime. And you can come back if you want to.” Dore sighed. “You want to tell me your name? Just the first one so if you call, I’ll know it?”

  “No, no, I can’t,” the girl said.

  “Wait again,” Dore said, and went to the bedroom to get some money. She came out and pressed ten dollars into the girl’s hand. “In case you get hungry.”

  “I can’t take this,” the girl said.

  “You just did,” Dore said, and the girl hesitated for a moment and then tucked it into her shirt. She put her hand on the door, and then Dore impulsively hugged her. She felt the girl stiffen. “How old are you?” Dore asked, but the girl pulled on the door and was gone.

  Dore leaned along the wall, listening to the clatter of steps down the stairs. She went to the window and looked out, watching the girl stride down the street, seeing her pull out the paper Dore had given her and study it for a moment. Dore wondered what the matter was with this one, what could hurt so much she couldn’t find a voice to it. Anyway, Dore thought, it would be a story, wouldn’t it, to tell Nick when he got there.

  For a while Robin just walked. She kept feeling Dore’s arms about her, seeing Dore’s face. That woman didn’t know Nick had a family, didn’t know where he lived or who Robin was, and yet she had a sure, simple claim to him anyway. Robin was a complete stranger to her, and yet she had let her into the apartment without even asking how she’d found her way to this door. She had given her money and an address and endless comforts without insisting on an explanation. Robin took out the piece of paper again and looked at the phone number, at Dore’s name scribbled across t
he top. She still wasn’t sure what was going on now between this woman and her father, only that something somehow was, and if there was anyone to hate about it, it was her father.

  She walked, concocting accidents for him. She’d push him into the path of a subway. She’d wait for him in front of Dore’s so he’d know as soon as he saw her eyes blazing flame why she was so angry; and then, just as some lying explanation spilled from his lips, she’d stab him with a fork she had stolen from a restaurant. She thought about Leslie, and suddenly she was furious with her, too, for not knowing, for letting all this happen.

  She didn’t want to spend another second in this city knowing her father was here and Dore was waiting for him. She looked out at the road. There were plenty of cars—she could probably line up a ride to Pittsburgh soon enough. She stood out in the center of the road and jabbed out her thumb.

  She didn’t get back to Pittsburgh until after two in the morning. She had been lucky again, getting a ride for most of the way from a middle-aged truck driver. He made her sit in the back behind a faded pink curtain because, he said, it was illegal for him to pick up anyone and he had been docked for it once before. She didn’t mind it behind the curtain. There was a pillow, a blanket, and the steady drone of the road to put her to sleep, deep and dark and dreamless.

  He woke her up in front of a taxi stand and insisted on waiting until she got another ride. It took her only two more rides to get into the city, and then she used Dore’s ten dollars for a cab, giving the driver the entire bill for a $3.50 fare, a little surprised when he didn’t even thank her.

  The lights were blazing in the house. Before Robin even stepped onto the flagstone, the front door jerked open and Leslie strode down the walk toward her. Robin froze in place. Leslie, silent, lifted one hand and slapped Robin’s face. Dizzy with fear, Robin stepped back. Leslie had never struck her before, never, but here she was again, moving forward, and Robin shut her eyes. But there were arms about her, her mother’s breath against her neck, the feverish warmth of embrace. Two women hugging her in one day, Robin thought, confusing her, confusing time. “Let’s get inside,” Leslie said.