I'll Stay Page 9

  I felt the familiar, odd convergence of pride and fear. My mother was in Time! Oh, no, my mother was in Time! I skimmed the article looking for my name and felt relieved, then disappointed, when it wasn’t there. Then I began to read. The new novel was a “quieter look at the consequences of war.” Set in Saigon before the fall, it was “peculiar in tone and superficial in content. Ultimately, it fails. The minimalist style ushered in with Listen, Before You Go feels dated. Michaels needs to dig deeper if she wants her characters to rise above contradictions, clichés, and glibness.”

  I felt myself melt into the chair—this was very bad—as I read. Toward the end there was a short question and answer. Was the novel autobiographical? “Oh, dear, novels should be talked about in terms of what’s on the page.” Your husband is your agent? “He handles the business end and is always my first reader.” Do you write every day? “Yes.” (When can we open presents? I’d ask, eyeing my mother’s closed door on Christmas mornings.) Yes, it was important work. Yes, she felt an obligation to fans of Listen to continue writing, “to keep exploring the damage to our nation’s psyche from fighting that needless, senseless war.”

  I glanced back at the beginning of the review (glibness?) and winced. No wonder her editor hadn’t sent this to my parents yet. This was exactly what my mother had worried about and why it had taken her ten years to publish again. She must have asked me a thousand times, how would I top Listen? But I always thought that was the wrong question. Why try to top it? Couldn’t she just enjoy writing?

  I imagined her curled up on the couch, sobbing, when she read the review. She’d been right to worry, after all. Why hadn’t I been more sympathetic on the phone? Why had I gone to a school so far from home? After meeting Lee, I should go back to the house and call. Everything will be okay! Then I’d tell Dad to make sure there was enough of her favorite tea in the house and that he should remind her of her fans and what about pulling out letters she’d received over the years?

  Thank God I wasn’t there.

  I began rubbing my pounding temples. My enigmatic mother was an expert on a four-hundred-year-old poem and yet her own writing was thoroughly modern. She wrote about war although she’d never been in a single battle. In front of a crowd she was engaging and authoritative but at home she was quiet and distracted. She was an elitist from a middle-class background. She loved to eat but rarely cooked. She loved to drink wine but could go for months without it. She was charming and cold, interested and bored, engaged and distant.

  The clinic door opened and I sucked in a quick breath as Lee walked toward me. She wore baggy jeans, a long sleeve, white T-shirt, and brown wood clogs. Her hair, usually down on her shoulders, was pulled back into a loose ponytail. A scab had formed over the welt but had since fallen off, leaving an oblong, off-white patch on her cheek. A thick red scar, like the zipper on my Indiana sweatshirt, stretched down the center of her upper lip. Eventually, the health center doctor told her, the scars would fade. She was thinner, smaller, shorter, so unlike the person who always turned heads—she commanded such presence!—whenever she walked into a room. I felt a sudden urge to run. Instead I stood and, hands shaking, held out her coffee.

  “Thanks,” she said. If she noticed that it wasn’t her favorite coffee from Village Pantry, if she wondered why I hadn’t left enough time to go there before coming here, she didn’t say.

  I pushed open the doors and we started down the sidewalk on Tenth Street. The sun, red-rimmed above the trees, was hot and the air still. It was going to be another scorcher. My head pounded and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I wasn’t going out tonight. What was it now, ten nights in a row? Eleven? I’d go to Ben’s practice this afternoon, back to the house for dinner, and to the library to finish my paper. No Christopher Mansfield. Not tonight. Not again.

  “How was it?” I shifted my backpack to my other shoulder but it was no use. It was too heavy and I winced as it cut into my shoulder blade.

  “Okay.”

  “Do you think it’s helping?”

  “Helping with what?”

  There it was again! This slight edge in her voice. I heard it the other day when I asked if I could get her a Diet Dr Pepper from Village Pantry, and I heard it the day before that, too. She was angry with me. Yet glancing at her, I wasn’t sure. Despite her dark skin, her cheeks were pale, almost ashen, and her swollen eyes seemed more pained than angry. I looked down at my Top-Siders and told myself to put one foot in front of the other.

  The first couple of weeks after we got back from Florida, we met in the stairwell or at the student union and I apologized, over and over. I’m sorry I left you. I’m sorry I couldn’t find Donny’s house. I’m sorry this happened. She wouldn’t talk about it. She kept saying that she was fine and she’d get this strange, almost dreamy look in her eyes. Lately, I’d tried to talk about normal things. School. Her film. The house. But something was still there between us. I felt it.

  “Do you still like this counselor?” I asked.

  “I guess. But I don’t think she really cares about me. She knows I’ll be gone soon and she probably thinks, what’s the point?”

  I shook my head. “But this is her job.”

  “I think she got mad at me today.”

  “What?”

  “I kept asking questions, like, do your parents understand your job? Are you close to them? Do you live alone? Do you have lots of friends? She wouldn’t answer.”

  What the hell did these questions have to do with anything? And wasn’t Lee the one who was supposed to answer questions?

  But I really didn’t know what you were or weren’t supposed to do with a counselor. Sophomore year when Lee and I were so obsessed with Freud, it was because of our fascination, and horror, with the Rat Man case and because Freud had made such a valuable contribution to civilization. He was one of her great people in history. Eventually we decided that talking to a counselor was good. But until Lee began going, I didn’t know anyone who’d actually been to one, except my mother, but she hadn’t gone for long.

  “Maybe you should stick to talking about, you know, the thing.” My voice stung in my throat. “The thing. You know. That happened.”

  We crossed the street and now the sun was out of the trees and I felt the rays burn my skin, sear into my headache, tighten my breath. Beads of sweat broke out across my upper lip and forehead. Water. I needed a water fountain.

  “We don’t talk about that,” Lee mumbled.

  When I stopped walking, Lee stopped, too. I blurted, “You told her, right?”

  Lee was staring at something over my shoulder. She had that strange look on her face again, forehead slightly wrinkled, lips parted, eyes wide and unblinking. She was here but not here. Was she thinking about what happened?

  “Lee? Did you tell her?”

  “What?” she asked.

  Was she still in shock? I asked again, “Lee, what do you talk about?”

  “I don’t know.” She frowned and we started to walk again. Oh, God, did she talk about me? But if she hadn’t told the counselor about what happened, what did she say? Maybe she told her that I was a lousy friend. I felt the heat burn across my chest. This weather and hangover were killing me.

  Then we were in front of the union where Lee would break off to go to class and I’d go inside to work on my paper. Tears filled my eyes and I lowered them because it was so hard to keep looking at her. The other day I also found her in bed in the cold dorm—it was only two o’clock in the afternoon—just staring at the wall and the day before that she was nowhere to be found for the senior speeches. The senior speeches, for God’s sake. No one ever misses that. Finally, I looked at her.

  She lifted her eyebrows and this time seemed to see me. “What happened to you last night? I looked for you. Julie said you went out with her but then stayed.”

  I hadn’t told her about Christopher. He was a frat boy, the type she hated. Too good looking, she’d say, too full of himself. Vapid. Entitled. Would she think that I
was compromising myself? Selling my soul? Or some other reason?

  But then I thought about Christopher’s lips, full and meaty yet disciplined. I felt a tingling in my thighs. Could lips be disciplined?

  “I came back late.” My heart raced with too much caffeine. And I was clammy and hot and not at all myself.

  And then, just like that, it was as if she didn’t see me anymore. As if she were drifting away again, like the smoke from Christopher’s cigarette. I thought about an early chapter in Listen, Before You Go, when Phoebe describes Whit, who’d just gotten home from the Army hospital, as “fading away in mid-sentence.” Lee did the same thing, didn’t she? She faded away. She zoned out.

  “Oh, Lee,” I sobbed. “I’m so worried.”

  Lee pressed her lips together in a frown and shook her head rapidly. Her voice was loud and agitated. “I’m fine. Stop it! Stop crying!”

  Then she turned and walked away.

  I hurried up the steps of the union, through the doors, and around the corner to the South Lounge. Hardly anyone was here—it was too early—and I dropped into a leather couch near the piano. My heartbeat and breathing began to slow. No more gulping. No more feeling as if my lungs were caving in. The lounge was cool, quiet, and dark. This was what I needed. My problem was the sudden heat outside and too much drinking and not enough sleep. Maybe I’d just rest for a moment.

  CHAPTER 6

  That night at Nick’s, the bar we’d monopolized this past month, we took a table on the second floor, at the top of the stairs, with enough seats for others who were coming later. Julie ordered pitchers of beer and popcorn as I squeezed onto the bench next to Lynn. The music was loud, the room stuffy and hot. I was staying for one beer. Lee went to dinner with her film class, the first night she’d been out since we got back from spring break. She’d agreed to meet me here afterward and then we’d walk back to the house. Before bed I’d call Ben, as I’d promised today, to wish him luck. Tomorrow he and the team were leaving for a three-game series in Michigan, the last of his regular season college baseball career.

  I’d met up with him today at his practice. Afterward, while hurrying across the field, he said, “I called you last night. No one answered.”

  “I wasn’t in my room yet,” I said. “And Sarah can sleep through anything.”

  He nodded and pushed his glasses up his nose. Black framed and sturdy, they looked like the glasses my dad wore and were so out of fashion that people often gave him a double look. Even if he noticed, which I didn’t think he did, he didn’t care. Ben was practical. Because of astigmatism he couldn’t wear contact lenses and he needed something solid, dependable, he said, while playing baseball.

  At five feet ten, Ben was thick and solid with sturdy legs and strong arms. His dirty blond hair was so short that it didn’t move as we jogged across the field. It took all my energy to keep up with him. When we reached the weight room door, he turned and grabbed my arm. I was so used to his spring routine—hurry up, baseball, study, no time, gotta go, baseball, study—that I gasped. This campus had thirty thousand students. Surely he didn’t know anything about last night.

  “Are you okay?” He let go of my arm.

  I’d taken a nap in the South Lounge this morning and woke, feeling a little better, to a crowded room and a girl playing the piano. But I wasn’t okay. I was out of shape and sweating and I was deceiving him. I was a bad person. I cringed and nodded. “What about you? How are you feeling about the Michigan games?”

  He sighed. “I’m in such a hitting slump and I missed that big play at second in the Purdue game. Coach doesn’t want to pull me because I’m a senior. But I told him to do it. Put in Kelsey. He’s got so much promise and he’s a better shortstop than I am. Kills me, but it’s true. And it’s going to kill me sitting in the dugout and watching him play, too. But it was the right thing to do. The team’s more important than me.”

  “Oh, Ben, you’re so good,” I croaked. And he was. He loved baseball. How many other people would work as hard as he does and then give it up for the team? I felt something sour—last night’s beer and tuna casserole—churn in my stomach.

  “I’m not that good,” he said. “My batting average sucks.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant.” I could barely get the words out. I felt myself growing smaller and smaller as I stood there, looking up at him. And then I turned to the line of trees along the far side of the field. On the top of a giant maple a few leaves flapped frantically back and forth, like the leaves are having a nervous breakdown, Lee used to say, looking up at the trees. Maybe I was having a nervous breakdown. I started to cry. Again.

  Ben sucked in a breath and reared back. I’d only cried in front of him a few times, and each had left him dumbstruck. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and reached out and rubbed my arm slowly, then faster and then slowly again. He quickly dropped his hand, scratched his forehead, and asked, in a timid voice that I imagined was afraid of the answer, “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m so tired,” I blubbered. “And you’re in a slump. And I just feel so bad.”

  “About my slump?”

  Ben and I gave each other a lot of freedom. We didn’t need to be with each other all the time or find each other at the end of a drunken night. We were practical. He needed his sleep. He needed baseball and to maintain his straight-A average. And I needed, well, what did I need?

  “I don’t know!” I cried.

  “Come here.” He reached for me and I fell against him. He smelled like sweat and fresh dirt, and something in his pocket poked my ribs. His arms were loose around me, not taking my breath away. Not as if his life depended on it. Not as if my life depended on it.

  “Ben, let’s go!” Coach opened the door.

  “I gotta hit the weight room,” Ben said. “Look, you don’t have anything to feel bad about, okay? This is just happening to us because of baseball season.”

  Something was happening to us.

  I poured myself a second beer. Amy was telling a story about a party. Lisa ordered another pitcher. The music was Aerosmith, then Zeppelin. You need coolin’, baby I’m not foolin’.

  Something was happening to us. Ben’s comment before break, why don’t you come to Philadelphia with me, was a shock. Because this meant something different, something more serious. I respected him. Other than my mother and Lee, he was the hardest working person I knew. But to go from a few I think you’re beautiful to come to Philadelphia, well, that was a big leap. How was I supposed to take that? I’d blurted, “let’s just see how it goes,” and hurried to the bathroom to give myself time to think. And we hadn’t talked about it since then.

  On the stairs in front of me I saw heads, then shoulders, and I leaned forward, my heart hammering in my chest. But it was just Ducky, pearls bold and white against her tan neck and pink Lacoste shirt, and a few others from the house. I watched Ducky’s blue eyes flicker as she glanced around the table, hoping to squeeze in somewhere, anywhere, except next to me. But Tracey pushed her forward and she had no choice but to slide onto the bench and scoot next to me until our shoulders and thighs touched.

  She smelled like Lubriderm lotion and I remembered—I could still see—how at Donny’s house she’d hugged the toilet seat as I held her hair. I glanced at the tiny green alligator on her shirt and imagined it jumping off her chest, blowing up to life size, and swallowing me whole. I shuddered, reached for the pitcher, and poured another beer. When had I drunk the previous one? Ducky and I had barely seen each other since we got back. I felt a prickly sensation on the back of my neck. Maybe she felt it, too, because she kept shifting in her seat. She drank her beer in two giant gulps and poured another.

  The cockroach in Donny’s bathroom. The bass of the music thumping in my chest. The window. Jittery Man’s corroded toes. And Lee’s face, white as a sheet. I cringed. Such a cliché. What would my mother say? White as milk. White as a cloud. Maybe she wouldn’t even say white. Maybe she’d say alabaster. Pallid. Snowy.


  “How’s Lee?” Ducky whispered. “She’s never around. Have you noticed that? How she never goes out with us anymore?”

  “She’s out tonight,” I said. “She’s meeting me here in a little while.”

  Ducky nodded and fiddled with her pearls. The others were busy planning our graduation party at the house and not paying attention to us. I looked around the table. We were red and swollen from too much time on the sundeck, too much beer, too much cheese strata and starchy potato casserole. We were giant tomatoes, bursting on the vine, ready for picking.

  “Did she tell you what happened?” Ducky whispered.

  “We know what happened.” I shifted in my seat.

  “She finally told you?” Ducky sucked in a breath. The corners of her mouth turned up slightly, and I knew that she hoped it wasn’t as bad as she imagined.

  “Ducky, something bad happened to her,” I said. “We know this.”

  She slumped forward, her pearls dangling under her chin, her blond feathered bangs falling into her eyes. “I feel so awful. It could’ve happened to you or Sarah. Or me. That’s all I keep thinking about.” She leaned back. Her big blue eyes filled with tears and her white eyebrows began to tremble.

  I shushed her. We’d made a promise, after all, not to tell anyone. Not a soul.

  “Is it all you think about, too?” She didn’t wait for me to respond. “And I can’t stand to see her. I know this is awful, but I can’t help it. The other day when she came into the dining room, I ran up the back stairs so I wouldn’t have to talk to her. Isn’t that terrible? At least that thing on her cheek is gone. Oh, but her lip! Are people still asking her what happened to it?”

  I nodded. I tripped. That was what I heard her tell Susie. I tripped and didn’t break my fall.