“You guys were here earlier, huh?” said the tall blond bartender/innkeeper. She was probably in her mid-forties, but wore a tight shirt and low jeans that exposed a swath of her overly tanned belly.
“For dinner.” I nodded.
“I’ll knock twenty off your rate since you already ate,” she said as she took a key down from its hook.
“Thanks,” I said, grateful for any opportunity to save some money.
“That woman’s a poet,” Quinn whispered loudly to Abcde.
“But she don’t know it.” Abcde winked, then said, “If you consider rhymes poetry, that is. Which I don’t.”
———
WE HAD TO walk through the dark restaurant and the bustling but friendly poker room to get to the stairway that led up to the hotel area. I was happily surprised by our room, at the end of the long hallway. It was huge, with high ceilings, antique furniture, two queen-size beds.
Quinn threw open the doors of the large wardrobe and found the TV inside. “Can we watch it, Eema?” she asked. She hadn’t watched TV for ages.
“Television rots your brain,” said Abcde and Quinn immediately closed the doors, as if just looking at the blank screen would zap her intelligence. She continued to explore the rest of the room, picking up the miniature bottles of shampoo and lotion, the paper caps covering the water glasses.
“This looks like a table where you could have tea.” Quinn sat in one of the pink Queen Anne—style chairs by the small table under the window, a window that, behind the wooden blinds, looked out to the brick wall of the old building next door. It comforted me to know it wouldn’t be easy for anyone to look in.
“We could make some tea.” Abcde thumbed through the tea bags next to the coffeemaker by the bathroom sink.
“It’s too late,” I said. “We should get ready for bed.”
Abcde flung off her shirt, pulled down her gauzy skirt, stood naked in the middle of the room. Her body was substantial, like the Venus of Willendorf’s, her breasts with their large nipples drooping downward, her belly lapping gently onto her pubic hair, but there was a dignity to it, a sort of animal grace. Her body was fully her own.
“What?” she asked when she caught me gaping. “You said get ready for bed. I prefer to sleep in the nude.”
This was one instance where Quinn didn’t follow her lead. She quickly looked away and took her pajamas into the bathroom to change.
———
THERE WAS A knock on the door after all of us had gotten into bed, Quinn and me in one, Abcde in the other. If Abcde had been wearing a nightgown, I’m sure Quinn would have chosen to sleep with her. The knocking continued, and my whole body stiffened until Ben said, “Hello? Izzy? Are you in there?”
“Hold on,” I called out. I kissed Quinn, grabbed the key, slipped on some flip-flops, and said, “I’ll see you later.”
“We won’t wait up.” Abcde’s voice was sleepy but sly.
BEN LOOKED TIRED. “We took a couple of rooms here, too,” he said, leading me down the hall. “My mom didn’t want to be at the house without my dad.”
“He’ll be out tomorrow?” I asked.
“If all goes well.” He opened the door to his room. It was on the other side of the hall, so it felt a bit like stepping through the looking glass; everything was the exact opposite of our room. I tried not to look at his open duffel bag, the boxers folded neatly on top. I tried not to get too happy when I saw the toothbrush wet inside one of the room glasses. Had he brushed his teeth just for me? I wished I had taken more time to make myself presentable—I already had bed-head from lying down, and was wearing ratty sweats and a “Hawaii” T-shirt I had picked up at a thrift store in Idaho. My teeth were feeling furry even though I had brushed them less than an hour ago.
“So.” He sat down on one of the Queen Anne chairs.
“So.” I sat down on the other, dizzy with anxiety.
“So,” he said, leaning forward, eyes serious. “Did you poison that kid?”
The floor may as well have dropped out from under me. No Are you that girl? No Is your real name Karen? Those were already givens for him, apparently.
“I didn’t know he was going to do that.” The words fell out of my mouth before I had a chance to come up with a suitable response, even the standard I don’t know what you’re talking about.
“They have you on video.” He sucked his cheeks in. It made him look older, gaunt. Like his dad.
“I was kidding.” My mouth was too dry to swallow. “I didn’t think he’d really do it.”
In a way, it was a relief to be able to admit the truth, to not have to keep making up stories.
“You looked hot, at least.” He sounded weary.
I didn’t. I looked tired in that video. Dark circles under my eyes, smudged mascara, blotchy skin. Hair a mess. But my shoulders were naked, the shape of my breasts evident beneath the pixelation. Maybe that was enough for a guy to consider me hot. You could probably find the entire unblurred, uncensored tape online. You could probably find more of the videos that Nathan had taped of us together. I hadn’t had the stomach to search for them. I avoided anything that had to do with that story.
“Anyway,” he said, “I thought you were supposed to be dead.”
“That was the plan,” I told him.
KAREN FLUNG HER SCARF INTO THE MAW OF FRIGID water and nearly fell in herself as she ran across the rapidly breaking ice back to shore, chunks tumbling inches behind her feet. She was trembling, her throat raw with cold, when she got back to the car; she pulled out her money and left her wallet in the glove compartment with the note, left the passenger door open. Looking back, she could see her scarf floating in the hole in the ice, a streamer that said she was there, that said she was gone.
She walked for an hour in the snow, toes numb, tears freezing on her face, before a truck driver gave her a lift to a grocery store. She bought a cup of hot chocolate at the deli counter to try to warm up, then picked up some hair dye and a scissors. The grocery store didn’t have a bathroom, so she walked some more, feet burning and stony inside her boots, until she found a quiet gas station with a restroom in the back.
———
KAREN DRIBBLED DYE onto the top of her head with her cold-stiffened hands, then realized she should have cut her hair first. No sense in coloring all ten inches when she was going to hack most of them off. The dye burned the strip of scalp down her part, began to drizzle onto her forehead, sting the inside of her nose with its vinegar tang, but the scissors made a satisfying scritch as they sliced through one thick hank after another, blond hair drifting to the floor like corn silk during a shucking.
Karen caught sight of the anxious concentration on her face in the mirror as she poured dye onto her chopped hair, and couldn’t help but laugh. How many times had she seen this expression, this scene in a movie before—the woman running from the law, from her life, lobbing off her hair, getting dye all over her hands? She wondered if that’s where she got the idea, or if there was some genetic impulse that led women to escape to a gas-station bathroom and change the color of their hair. It gave her comfort to think of all those other women with their boxes of Miss Clairol stepping out of tiled rooms into the next phase of their lives. It made her feel like a character, an archetype, something both bigger and smaller than herself.
She worked the burnt chestnut in with gloved numb hands, some of the color slipping inside, making the thin plastic glom to her skin. The dye probably wasn’t the best thing for the baby, but it was better than what would have happened had she stayed. No way would her mother let her keep the baby, especially if she had to go to jail. Deena would have a conniption fit over her hair, too—the length, the rough edges, the color that brought out the Semitic features of her face—her dark eyes, her full lips. Deena always wanted her to look as WASPy as possible—no judge, she thought, would let a Jewish skater win. The Marilyn-blond hair, the nose job, the new last name, all of it to make her the perfect ice princess, as platinum and
blank as the ice itself.
Karen bent her head and rinsed the excess dye into the sink. She scrubbed at the runnels of brown on her forehead with wet paper towels, but they left shadows behind, like scratches, stretch marks, proof that she had clawed her way into this new version of herself.
ON THE ROAD, when Karen stopped the Pilates, the ballet, the hours of skating, and let herself eat the carbohydrates she craved, the chips, the full-fat cheeses, the hamburgers, the vegetables dripping with real melted butter instead of a shake of the Butter Buds canister, her mother’s worst fears came true. Her limbs and hips plumped out, softened. Her breasts, barely hills on her chest, grew heavier, more prominent. Karen was horrified at first, but over time, she found she was relieved. Relieved to not have to deal with all the training, the maintenance, the stress of trying—but never quite managing—to be perfect. Relieved to just sit around and do nothing, be no one. Her face looked better on a larger body, more at home. Her flesh felt more comfortable on her bones. She was building a good cozy place for her baby to grow. And people didn’t recognize her as easily. Some would say, “You look a little like that skater girl,” and she would say, “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“That girl,” they sometimes pressed on. “That girl who poisoned that skater.” And she would say, “I’m sorry—I guess I don’t follow sports.”
KAREN WOULD RENT the cheapest motel rooms she could find to save money, and let herself sleep as late as she wanted. She couldn’t remember ever waking up past six before. Even on weekends, her mother woke her up for an early morning jog, an extra figures session at the rink. Karen stretched under the scratchy sheets. The motel curtains were heavy, rubberized, dense, but cracked open just enough to let a band of sunlight, buttery and warm, across the bed, across her arm. Her limbs felt heavy, filled with wet sand. She didn’t have to get up, she reminded herself; she didn’t have to do anything at all. She luxuriated on the awful sheets, soaked in the strip of sun as if her skin were blotter paper, closed her eyes and drifted back to sleep.
When she woke, sometimes she let herself imagine she was carrying Lance’s baby. Lance wasn’t really gone—part of him was still alive, tumbling around inside her. They had shaken hands with such purity, she told herself, it had sparked new life. The baby would be born with red hair and freckles and a propensity to blush. Cindy and their parents would be so happy. Lance would get to start all over again. The thought filled Karen with joy. Then the reality came crashing down again: Lance was gone, forever; Nathan was in jail; she was on the run, alone. When the baby kicked, it felt like a rebuke.
THE MONEY EVENTUALLY started to dwindle, and Karen realized she’d need to find work, and to find work, she’d need to find papers. Papers with a name other than Karen. After a couple of discreet inquiries, she made her way to an apartment in Biloxi that smelled of beer and fried onions. She couldn’t believe it when the guy handed her the Social Security card: Isolde Jones. Of all the possible names in the world, she ended up with the one associated with her first kiss with Nathan, with her greatest triumph on ice.
“Do you have anything else?” she asked, but he shook his head.
“Not around your age,” he said. “Not female.”
She wondered how the real Isolde Jones had died. She silently thanked her for her life as she sat down for the ID photo and told herself she could always go by Izzy.
THE BABY WAS born in a Travelodge. Karen was scared to go to the hospital, scared to give anyone her new ID. But she was scared to go it alone, too. She called Tansy, her boss at the diner where she had been working; Tansy had said her sister was a midwife. She worked at a place called The Farm, but she also went to people’s houses and let them give birth on their own beds, in their own bathtubs. Tansy had asked Karen if she wanted to meet with her for all the prenatal workups, but Karen said no; she had no money, no insurance. She read What to Expect When You’re Expecting in the library and took notes in a spiral notebook; she made sure she was eating protein, taking the cheapest vitamins she could find. She was sure she could do it on her own. Women give birth in fields; she could surely do it holed up in a hotel room. Women in history didn’t have ultrasounds, amniocentesis—why should she?
Once the labor started, she wasn’t so sure anymore. She wanted someone to grab onto, someone who could cut the umbilical cord with something other than her teeth. She called Tansy.
Dawn arrived with her birth kit full of tubes and syringes and oxygen. Her hands were red and chapped from frequent washings, her fingers long, fingers that looked like they knew what they were doing. She looked different from Tansy—taller and thinner, hair cropped short, a little sapphire glinting on the side of her nose. She looked like a dancer, not a midwife. But she rubbed Karen’s back, she made herbal tea in the hotel coffeepot; she showed Karen the railing in the bathtub that would be good to hold on to while she squatted and pushed; she listened to the baby’s heartbeat and let Karen listen to it, too. It was the first time she had heard the heartbeat, the first time she really let herself realize there was another life inside her, and she cried with joy and fear all through the labor, until Dawn put sticky, bloody Quinn in her arms, and then she cried even more.
HE’S OUT, YOU KNOW,” SAID BEN. “NATHAN MAIN. HE got out of jail last week—it was all over the media.”
I felt a chill just hearing the name. “I think I may have seen him, across the slough,” I said. “I think he may have been the one who broke the bottles.”
Ben closed his eyes.
“You should probably turn yourself in,” he said quietly.
“I can’t turn myself in.” I jumped out of the chair. “They’ll take Quinn.”
“What are you going to do, then? Wait for him to poison you both?” He stood up, too, took a step closer to me.
“I don’t know …”
“Do you want me to help you hide? Your face is all over the media now, too.”
“Is that how you knew who I was?” As much as I hoped no one else had recognized my face, I felt something deep inside my chest relax. Ben had seen me. He had really truly seen me, all the way to the darkest corner of my heart. And he hadn’t run away; he was still right there.
“I always thought you looked familiar.” His eyes were soft, pained. “When I saw the news last week, something clicked. I even asked my dad if he thought you looked like that skater girl, but he said I was crazy, so I put it out of my mind. Tried to, at least. Then I saw you skate …” He let out a heavy sigh. “We really need to get you out of here, Izzy.”
“You’d be an accomplice.”
“An accomplice to an accomplice.” He chuckled softly. “That probably isn’t so bad. One year, maybe? Five? I’ll get off on good behavior.”
“If that’s what does it for you.” I couldn’t seem to help myself.
He shot me a look and I started to laugh until I started to sob, and he took me into his arms. I wondered if he was thinking about how he was holding the same body from the video he had seen, if he got some charge out of that, but he shouldn’t, it wasn’t; it wasn’t the same body. A body’s cells are replaced every seven years. He was holding someone new.
IT WAS ALMOST 4 a.m. by the time I went back to my room.
“Did you get lucky?” Abcde mumbled as I walked past her bed. I didn’t answer, let her drift back to sleep. I wouldn’t call it getting lucky so much as getting clear. Coming clean.
I crawled into bed with Quinn and hoped she wouldn’t be able to smell Ben all over me, but I relished the smell myself, breathed it in deep.
If a leaf touches a pear as it’s growing, even just after the blossom has fallen, it leaves a mark. Sometimes you don’t see it right away, but as the pear ripens, a dark spot will rise on its skin.
If I could see all the past touches on my body, I’d be one big bruise. Nathan’s handprint would appear on just about every inch. Quinn’s fingers would carve a deep, sweet shadow into my palm. Wherever Ben touched me, it felt as if he left a smear of l
ight. I could almost feel myself glowing beneath the sheets.
QUINN AND ABCDE woke me much earlier than I would have liked. “Can we go swimming, Eema?” Quinn asked. When I opened my eye a crack, I saw she was already in her bathing suit. There was a small pool in the back of the hotel, the concrete pool area covered with a canopy of netting, presumably so people wouldn’t try to dive in from the second floor.
“I guess so,” I said. “Just be careful.” I slipped easily back into sleep.
“EEMA.” WHEN I opened my eyes again, at first I thought I was still dreaming. Quinn’s lips were swollen, like some Hollywood starlet’s. The smell of chlorine made me realize I was actually awake, that time had passed. And something crazy was happening to Quinn’s face.
“Did you get stung?”
“I don’t know …”
“I didn’t see anything,” said Abcde. “Her lips just starting blowing up. And she has a rash on her chest …”
I fumbled for the EpiPen. I thought I had left it on the nightstand, but it wasn’t there. I jumped out of bed to search and finally found it in the drawer, next to the Gideon’s Bible. I removed the gray locking cap, and willed my hand to stop trembling as I swung my arm back, then jabbed it against the side of her thigh. It bounced right off—the needle didn’t come out like it was supposed to. I tried again, as Quinn said, exasperated now, “Eema.” Nothing.
“Should we take her to a doctor?” asked Abcde.
“Probably,” I said, but then I realized I probably shouldn’t go to such a public place—not with fake papers. Not with Nathan looking for me, maybe advising other people to be on the lookout, too. “Can you go get Ben? He’s in room 234.”
“Sure thing.” She raced off in just her bathing suit, haunches jiggling majestically.
“Can you breathe okay?” I asked Quinn.
Delta Girls Page 23
