Girl in pieces

I can't be myself, I can't be myself

On the phone, Blue said she'd been out for three months and living in Madison with her mother. They weren't getting along, she said, so she thought maybe she'd take a trip to Kansas to see Isis until things cooled off. Isis had wandered to Kansas from Minnesota with a man; now she was selling bags of jerky and jack-off magazines at a truck stop. Isis and Blue were sitting in a bar nursing gin and gingers when they thought of me, and the warm place I'd gone to, and my mother. "I called Creeley and talked to Bruce. He gave me her name-very thoughtful, Bruce, and not one for patient confidentiality. I know you two had your moments, but Bruce is a good sort, underneath all his bluster."
Blue called my mother. "She's actually very polite! Thought she'd be some kind of monstertron the way you kept clamped up in Group. Keeps abreast of you through the boyfriend. Or, should I say, not-boyfriend." She paused on the other end of the line and I heard the click of a lighter, the yappy dog-squawk of Isis saying Oh, you shut your mouth to someone in the background. "He told her where you worked and, well, I found that number, too. Isn't the Internet wonderful? It's like a big old rock. All sorts of shit crawls out once you kick it over."
She breathed in a long, almost relieved rush. "I miss you." She began to sniff. "It's so hard, Charlie. It's just so hard. I need a freaking break."
And now I'm waiting for her at the Greyhound bus station, ignoring leery looks by men with mullets and yellow teeth. I paw the ground with the toe of my boot. Riley wasn't at his house last night when I went over. He wasn't home when I woke up in his bed this morning, either, which made me a little worried. The day is warm, cooler than it has been, but still bright and lovely. It's the beginning of November, and in Minnesota, people are already in winter jackets and boots, huddling against the wind.
I have to be at work in an hour. I buy a Coke from the machine and watch the parade of gray buses pull into the lot. The Coke makes my mouth sticky, too sweet.
She's the last one off, tripping down the final step. She catches herself, blinking in the sunshine, shading her eyes with one hand.
Blue's almost thirty but still looks like a teenager in her tight cargo pants and Lady Gaga T-shirt. It's only up close, like now, that you see her hard life in her face, at the edges of her eyes.
Blue drops the duffel, grabs me in a tight squeeze. "Charlie! My favorite Bloody Cupcake." She steps back, her eyes grazing every inch of me.
"Holy shit, you look good, Silent Sue. Your hair got so long! Tell me his name." She lights a cigarette.
"Your teeth," I say, surprised. "You fixed your teeth."
"The Lumber King of Madison forked over the cash. He felt guilty, I guess, for fucking me all those years. And I can't fucking tell you how fucking goddamn painful it was, either, getting these teeth. Anyway." She digs in her purse again. "Shit. I'm out of cigarettes. Where's your car? Can we stop and get some on the way to your place?"
Blue's teeth used to be blunted little nubs. The meth had scrubbed them down, filmed them, made them as soft as Play-Doh. Now she has a full, gleaming set of square, white teeth. Her face is no longer blotched and bloated from meds, but smoothed out by facials and foundation and powder. Her hair is a rich gold color.
"T don't have a car, but I don't live very far, just a few blocks away. Here, I'll carry your bag."
Blue stares at me. "Are you serious? No car? In this heat? I'm freaking dying, Charlie." She snaps on large black sunglasses. I shrug.
"Why didn't you fly?" I ask. "I'm sure the Lumber King could afford it."
Blue snorts. "Oh, no. No planes for me. Scared shitless. No way. We don't belong in the air. That's my personal opinion."
She taps carefully alongside me in her heels. I sneak a look down: she still has the rings on her toes. For some reason, this makes me more comfortable. I point out things like Hotel Congress and the tiny movie theater that serves cayenne-and-Parmesan-flecked popcorn and shows black-and-white films featuring people with deep, sorrowful accents. "So, where's this rock star live? Can I meet him?"
We're at the corner of Twelfth; I point vaguely down the street toward his house. "He's not home now." At least, I don't think he is. Maybe he's back now, sleeping whatever he did off.
"We'll meet up later?"
"Maybe," I answer noncommittally. I'm not sure why I'm uncomfortable with Blue meeting Riley, but I am. I wave wanly to Hector and Leonard on the porch. Hector sits up straight when he sees Blue and brushes at the sweat pool on his chest. He raises his eyebrows at me. Blue says, "I'm just a little nervous, you know? I need something to drank," and I point to the liquor store next door, even though the thought of Blue drinking fills me with dread and disappointment. I was hoping she'd be clean. Cleaner than me, anyway.
"Gentlemen," Blue says sweetly. She clicks off to the liquor store.
Leonard's fingers tremble as he packs his pipe, bits of tobacco fluttering to his jeans. Hector helps him.
Leonard rasps, "No trouble, Charlie. Remember? I don't mind your friend, but I don't want any trouble."
Oh, Leonard, I think. I'm in a heap of trouble.
---------------------------Blue flips through my sketchbooks and drawings. "Oh my fucking God, Charlie."
She traces her fingers over the faces. "This is amazing. I didn't know you could draw like this. Holy moly. And look at your crazy wall."
She glances at the toilet. "There's no door on that."
"T wash dishes for a living, Blue. You don't get doors for that. There's a locked toilet down the hall, but the guys use it. Don't forget toilet paper if your modesty gets the best of you."
Blue lights a cigarette and paws through the paper bag from the liquor store, extracting a bottle. She cracks the top, hunts for glasses in the sink, pours three fingers of vodka into each, and hands one to me.
She raises her glass. "You in? This place is fucked up, Charlie. Is everybody here like those guys on the porch?"
I take the glass, easy as pie, and drink it down, not even caring that I have to work in half an hour. It's just that easy now. "I was kind of hoping," I say softly, "that maybe you weren't drinking or anything?"
Blue purses her mouth. "It didn't take long for me to start up again after I got out, you know? Drinking, I mean. Not anything else." She shrugs but won't meet my eyes.
"Have you been...good?" My voice is careful. Blue is kneeling on the floor now, flipping slowly through another sketchbook. Her shirt rides up her back. The skin there is tawny, tender-looking.
Blue winces through a plume of smoke. "I really only ever did the bad shit when I was using, you know. I would lose total control. I'm a real pussy with cutting and burning unless I'm high or something." She looks at me sideways. "You? You cutting again?" Her eyes flick along my sleeves.
"No," I say. "Nothing like that. It's just..."
What would she say about the drug runs? I drop my eyes to my lap. Blue cocks her head. "You okay, Charlie?" I'm kind of in a mess and I can't get out.
But those words jam in my throat. I swallow hard; they drop back down my throat.
She looks at me for a full, pulsing second. "What about the rock star? He treating you okay? Some guys, musicians especially, have a real knack for crapping on women."
I busy myself with cleaning my glass, finding a clean work shirt. "It's good. It's okay. You know."
"He's a little older, huh?"
"Yeah. Twenty-seven."
I turn my back to change into my shirt. I can feel Blue's eyes on me. "Charlie, have you ever had a boyfriend before?"
I slide my shirt down over my face quickly so my mouth is muffled. "Not really. No."
Under her breath, she says something I can't catch.
"What did you just say?" I turn back to her.
"Nothing," she says quickly, getting up and dousing her cigarette in the sink. "No worries."
Then she says brightly, "Well, show me the television and the computer and I think I'll be good to go until you get back."
I pretend to smile, even though I'm wondering what she said that I couldn't hear. "Oh, Blue," I say. "I have some bad news for you."
All night, the girls at Grit are talking about something called All Souls and the burning of an urn. It's a big parade along Fourth Avenue to honor the dead, with people dressing up and painting their faces like skeletons and lots of weird stuff.
Temple says, "It's the best. We get super busy, no matter what, and everyone who comes in is just stoked to be alive, ready to do some positive energy work. And the costumes! Brilliant as shit." The café is empty; they have nothing to do. At one point Julie calls to ask how busy we are and when Temple hangs up, Randy nods knowingly and assembles her things and goes home. Tanner's been cut from the day and put on just one night a week and Julie's still washing dishes. The pastry case has been dusty and empty for over two weeks. Bianca got tired of never getting paid.
Temple fiddles with the espresso machine. "Last year, I built wings with Christmas lights and some asshole fell into me and ripped them off. And my friend fell into a fire dancer, so that was crazy."
She tugs at the filter and it suddenly gives, slopping espresso sludge all over her fluttery blue skirt, the one I secretly like because it has tiny bells at the hem. Temple swears. I bend down with a rag to swipe at the dark grounds on her skirt.
Linus comes out from the grill area, wiping her hands on a towel. "It's Day of the Dead, Charlie. Dia de los Muertos? Fucking twenty thousand people in a human chain walking downtown and buming wishes for the dead. All that shit in the air, you'd think it would do something, right? Community energy and all that jazz. But the world still sucks, doesn't it, Temple?"
"Don't knock it," Temple says. "My parents used to take us to sweats all the time. Positive energy is a powerful force."
"Do you have anything like that back home, Charlie?" Linus asks, gazing at the empty café. Linus always refers to Minnesota as back home when talking to me. Do you have tortillas back home? You must miss the snow back home. Are you going back home anytime soon, Charlie?
I glance up at them. "We aren't much for death. Once you're gone, you're gone. We don't like things that interfere with our ice fishing." I say this lightly, because I don't want to think of my dad right now.
They stare at me. "Kidding," I mumble.
Temple airs out the steamer. "It's a real trip, Charlie. You might dig it. It's a giant art party in honor of the human spirit."
I brush the last of the grounds from Temple's skirt, flick one of the little bells so it tink-tinks. The human spirit. My dad. Where did his spirit go? Can he see me? What about Ellis, that part of her that disappeared? Is something of her left somewhere? These thoughts scare me.
I think Temple is wrong. I don't think I'd dig that kind of art party at all.
Blue shows up at True Grit at closing time, having changed into shorts and sneakers and a hoodie. Her eyes are fuzzy. I wonder how much of the vodka she drank. I mop the main floor furiously, wondering what she's talking to Linus and Temple about. Blue's arms are covered, but can they see the lines on her calves? Sweat erupts on my forehead. In gym once, a girl busted the toilet stall door down, catching me in only my bra, my gym shirt in my hands. I changed in the stall, away from the girls, and always wore a longSleeved shirt under my red-and-white gym shirt. She laughed and then covered her mouth with her hands. After that, everyone inched away from me when I came into the locker bay and drew out my gym clothes. They gave out sharp hisses as I took my things and went back to the toilet stalls. Temple is chatting amiably with Blue. Who was Temple in high school? Was she a hisser or a retreater? Did Linus ever push a girl's head into the toilet, or did she keep her own down, just trying to make it to three o'clock? People have so many secrets. They are never exactly what they seem.
As we walk home, Blue says woozily, "Leonard told me how to get here, so I thought I'd meet you. Hope you're not mad or anything. I don't want to intrude on your space or anything, you know?"
She cranes her neck at the palm trees. "This place is totally weird. All this vegetation is some real Dr. Seuss-looking shit, you know that, don't you?" We walk in silence for a while until she finally asks, "Bar?" She has a hopeful look on her face as she looks up and down Fourth Avenue.
I hold up my hands. "Eighteen. You want a bar, you're on your own."
She reconsiders. "Let's go see if the rock star is home." She gives me a big smile.
I can't avoid it any longer, I guess, so I say okay. I wonder if he's come back since last night. I hope he's come back since last night. We can hear him a block away, strumming, voice lifting and falling as he works through a passage. I'm surprised; he hasn't played for several weeks now. A dreamy look passes across Blue's face. "That's him? God, that's fucking awesome."
He's on the porch when we approach, smoke lifting in gentle circles from the ashtray at his feet. "Charlie." He's curiously cheerful. "And Charlie has...a friend."
"Blue." She reaches over, takes a drag from his cigarette. That move sparks an ugly wave inside me-immediately, Blue is a million times more comfortable and familiar with Riley than I ever was. I don't understand how she can be that way. What is it about me that cant? And is she-flirting?
"Blue. Well, that's a beautiful name, Blue. I'm Riley West." He leans the guitar against the porch railing.
Is he flirting back? I can't read his signals.
"Thanks," Blue says. "I mean, it's not my real name, but I like it better."
I look at her in surprise, distracted from my anger. "What? Really? What's your real name, then?"
Blue takes another drag on the cigarette and exhales slowly. "Patsy. Patricia. Do I seem even remotely like a Patsy to you?"
"No," I say, shaking my head and smiling. "You don't seem remotely like a Patsy at all."
Riley laughs heartily. He must be a few down already, because he seems happy. I wish Blue wasn't around. If Riley's going to be happy, I want that all for myself. Lately, it's taking him three or four just to smile. He bows to Blue.
"A refreshment, ladies?" He goes into the house. Blue giggles. "He's cute," she whispers.
She looks out at Riley's neighbors on their porches, drinking wine and rocking in wicker chairs, fanning themselves with newspapers.
"He must like having his own audience. Besides you, I mean." She strums the strings on his guitar lightly. I bat her fingers away, irritated that she's being so friendly with his things. She glares at me. Riley reappears with icy bottles. Briefly, he nuzzles my cheek, then holds out his beer. Hesitantly, I clink bottles with them.
Blue downs half of hers in two gulps and wipes her mouth, looking from Riley to me and back again. She giggles. "You guys are funny."
"Why?" I take a sip of my beer.
"T don't know. You just are." Her face is shiny. "You guys can kiss or whatever. Don't mind me." I can feel my cheeks heat up.
Riley crosses his legs and offers her a cigarette. "There's a story here somewhere. Something tragic, I'm guessing, in the way you two met?"
Blue snorts and blows out a series of perfect smoke rings. "God, I love unfiltered cigarettes," she breathes. "Love them." She takes another large swallow of her drink. "We met at the cutters' clinic. I was there the longest." She sounds almost proud. "Isis came after me, then Jen, and then Charlie. Louisa, though, she was always there. Wait. Hey, are you okay, man?"
Riley's face is very still, like he's holding his breath. Blue looks at me. "Charlie. Didn't you tell him about Creeley?" She looks at me warily.
Riley clears his throat. "Charlie's been a bit reticent about her history. But it's not a problem. We all have our secrets." His voice is mild. He reaches out and pulls me closer to him. I feel better that he does that. Relieved.
Blue nods. "I used to call her Silent Sue, she was so quiet for a while. What did they call it, Charlie?"
I click my teeth together, weighing whether I should answer her.
"See-lective mutism." Blue suddenly remembers, sliding up on the railing, her legs smooth and gleaming. "Like, in certain situations, you just clam up, I guess. I'm a little bit of everything, myself. A mental mutt, if you will."
"Interesting," Riley says. "Hospitals are interesting, aren't they? Everybody you meet is like a little mirror of you. I've done my time, so I know. Very unnerving." The comers of his mouth twitch. I'm beginning to feel panicky, out of step with the way they're talking about me and getting along so easily. I grit my teeth and shoot a look at Blue.
"She was always drawing." Blue stubs out her cigarette. "After she got settled in, they had to practically kick her out of Crafts every day. She was the only one who liked it. I can't make anything artsy for shit."
"She has a lovely eye for line." Riley gazes at me, not smiling. "Have you heard about her little art show?"
Blue continues as though she didn't hear Riley. "God, I hated that place. I couldn't wait to get out. Penned us all in there like cattle, slicing off parts of our brains, right, Charlie?"
"What about you, Charlie?" Riley's finished his drink. "Were you chomping at the bit to get released, too?"
Riley's face is worn and handsome, so familiar to me that a soft ache for him wells up inside me before I tamp it down, watching as he and Blue tease each other with lighters and cigarettes. "No," I say softly. "I fucking loved it. I never wanted to leave."
Blue guffaws. "Well, yeah. You were sleeping on a fucking heating grate before you came in. What was not to love?"
Riley squints. "Heating grate?" he says slowly. I look at him. I realize suddenly that he doesn't remember, when we were sitting on the porch, all that time ago during the monsoon, that I told him I used to live outside. He doesn't remember. Because he's fucked up all the time. A wave of hard sadness rolls over me.
Blue looks from Riley to me. Her face pales. She smears her cigarette on the railing, mumbles Sorry.
Riley murmurs, "Hmm." And then goes in and refreshes our drinks, lights new cigarettes, steers the evening back. They talk about me as though I'm not there, teasing me and laughing when my face gets red. Eventually, the neighbors go in, lights turn off, the street quiets down, but Riley and Blue are still going strong, trading cigarettes back and forth, giggling in the Same snorty manner about music and politics.
Finally, I clear away bottles and overflowing ashtrays, fit Riley's guitar back in its case, lift Blue to her feet by her elbow. She whines. "Why can't we stay here? It's still so early! I'm on vacation, for fuck's sake."
But I take her back with me anyway, holding her upright as we navigate the narrow stairs to my room. In my room, I'm suddenly dismayed, looking down at the single futon tucked against the wall. Blue staggers to the toilet, pulling her jean shorts down. "Excuse me," she says. The sound of her pee echoes in the bowl.
She flops on the bed and wiggles her feet. "Somebody take off my shoes, please." I yank off her perilously high wedges and toss them in the corner.
"Turn off the light. That lamp is killing me."
In the dark, I use the toilet and brush my teeth, splash water on my face, Slide into boxers and a T-shirt, and stare at her, curled up on my bed, before I drop down next to her. I scoot her over with my hip. I feel a wave of missing for Ellis all of a sudden, the way we'd curl together in her bed, whispering, our breath warm on each other's faces. Gently, I rest my hip against Blue's. She's very warm.
Down the hall, a television murmurs.
"What's the rock star say about your scars, Charlie?"
I close my eyes.
"What are you doing here?" Blue asks, drowsy. "Go back to your boyfriend's."
"No."
Blue is quiet for a bit. "You don't have to worry about me, or anything. I mean, I like to flirt, it feels good, but I'm not...I wouldn't ever...I'm half show, is all I'm saying, okay, Charlie?" She pulls at the blanket and rolls toward the wall.
"And you know," she says, her voice getting sleepier, but with a little edge, "a girlfriend can touch her boyfriend's guitar, you know. You were mad at me for playing it and I bet you never even thought you were allowed to pick it up, but you are. He's not some god."
That smarts a little, that she's so right, but I don't know what to answer, so I stay quiet. When I think she's fallen asleep, when her breath has become heavy and I've almost fallen into darkness, she suddenly murmurs, "Hey. Don't let me forget. I have something for you. From Louisa." In the morning, she's white as a sheet but perky, lustily gulping the coffee I bought for her at the café down the street. She takes a bath in the tiny tub as I wash a few cups in the sink. She's not shy like me; I can see the history of her as she leans back, the water lapping at her breasts. After, she takes her meds, one by one, and then lines the prescription bottles up on the windowsill. I think back to her email, when she said she was on a lot of medication.
"T need grease for this hangover." She pulls on her T-shirt. It's shortsleeved. The burn scars on her arms are neat and deliberate. "And a soda. Like, a giant Coke."
I motion to her shirt, her arms. "You don't... mean, if anybody sees?"
She scowls. "What the fuck do I care if they see, Charlie? This is it. This is me." She tugs on my long-sleeved tee. "You're gonna live your whole life in the dark this way? It's better to get it out up front. And you know what makes me super mad? If a guy has scars, it's like some heroic shit show or something. But women? We're just creepy freaks."
"Take your boyfriend. I mean, I'm not trying to be mean or anything, I like him, that whole charming rogue thing he's got going on works like butter, but he's got major problems." She mimes drinking. "So, why didn't you tell him about the hospital or that you were on the streets? He can have problems but you can't?" Her words tumble out in an angry rush, surprising me.
I feel the press of tears. She's moving very fast for me. "I don't know." I swallow hard. "I just want to get something to eat, okay? Can we do that?"
I feel in my pocket for my money, but she pushes my hand down. "Don't. It's on me. I'm sorry. I am. It's okay."
She slings her purse over her shoulder. "Let's cruise. If I don't get that soda soon, I'm gonna vomit."
Blue buys us scrambled egg and hash brown burritos with green chile, and icy sodas. She's ravenous and catty in the diner, whispering about the waitress's wide ass, making dirty jokes about the salt and pepper shakers shaped like saguaro cactuses. She orders an extra soda and a cinnamon bun, the frosting sticking to her upper lip. We browse in the funky wig shop on Congress. She buys feathery earrings and tries on colorful teased wigs. We walk aimlessly downtown, staring in wonder at the crisp, cakeish facade of St. Augustine Cathedral, the dainty, forlorn Wishing Shrine of El Tiradito, with its cluster of burnedout veladoras. Blue spends a long time peering into the divots in the pale, crumbling wall of the shrine, at the wishes and gifts people have left, the sunken candles, the stiff, fading photographs. I touch an empty niche. Should I bring a photo of Ellis here? I run my fingers over the smooth stones.
Blue is very quiet as we walk home. I breathe the early-November air in, look at the wide, endless blue sky. In Minnesota, all the leaves are on the ground by now and the sky is gray, readying for cold and winter. Maybe it's even snowed once or twice. But here, everything is blue sky and endless warmth.
Back in the room, Blue settles on the easy chair with her phone, tapping and scrolling. When I casually ask how long she's staying, her eyes fog over.
"1 thought I told you I don't have anywhere to go, Charlie. You're so lucky here. It's so nice. Look at all this fucking sun, even in the winter! It's seventy-three degrees here right now."
She puts her head down. "Do you not want me here, Charlie?" I do, but I don't, but I do, but I don't. I change the subject. "What about everybody at Creeley?"
Blue rocks her head from side to side. "I don't really know, I don't keep up. Isis left after you. Louisa's never getting out, that dumb fuck. She's gonna either die or be a lifer, I swear. Oh, shit!"
She scrambles from the chair to her duffel bag, rooting through it until she finds something. She holds out ten black-and-white composition books, tied up in a red ribbon. "Louisa said to give these to you."
They're heavy in my hands. I can picture Louisa, her red-gold hair coiled on her head, smiling when I asked her what she was always writing in those composition books. The story of my life, Charlie.
"Aren't you gonna take a look?" Blue asks. "Maybe later." I slide them into my backpack. It doesn't look like Blue tampered with the ribbon, but still. I don't want to leave them here. Maybe there are things inside that Louisa only meant for me. Maybe I just want her words to myself.
Blue snuggles back in the chair. "Jen S. texted me. Dooley dumped her. She lost out on some basketball scholarship and kinda backslid, but her parents don't know, yet."
"Do you talk to anyone?" I ask Blue. "I mean, go to meetings or anything?"
Blue takes a swig of the beer she bought before we came back to the room. "Nah, I've got nothing left to say. You?"
"T emailed with Casper for a while, but she hasn't answered anything lately."
"You were always like her pet. We all knew it. Big fucking deal." Blue gets up abruptly, begins pulling clothes from her duffel and spreading them on the futon.
I slowly zip my backpack shut. "Casper liked everybody," I answer evenly, but what Blue says makes me feel guilty. Maybe I was a little bit Casper's pet, her special project.
"No, she didn't. She never liked me. Do you think she sent me emails when I got out? No."
She has her back to me, winding her hair into a bun. There is the swallow, plump and blue on the back of her neck, watching.
To break the tension, I ask what she'|l do while I'm at work. Blue shrugs, shuffling to the kitchen.
I want to say Stop as I see her slide the bottle from the windowsill, rinse out a glass. But who am I to say? I'm just as lost.
"Oh, you know. I'll be out and about. Maybe go talk to your neighbors." She turns to me and smiles, her new perfect teeth a gleaming wall inside her mouth.
My hand on the door, I say, "Blue, take it easy with that stuff, okay? Maybe we can take another walk tonight, just the two of us. It's nice weather to walk at night." I smile at her, hopeful, but she just gives me the peace sign and scrolls on her phone.
---------------------------She's not in the apartment when I get home from work. I find her, instead, in Riley's front room. I can hear the sound of laughter down the street as I turn the corner to his house. My stomach curdles with apprehension as I make my way up the porch steps and pause, looking through the screen door at the two of them on the floor, cigarettes in ashtrays, drink glasses everywhere, Blue strumming Riley's Hummingbird as he gently corrects her fingers. He's drawling jokes, she's laughing, her face flushed in the universe of his attention. Just seeing his hands on hers hurts. I know she said she'd never do anything with him, but still. And then I feel shitty, because didn't Blue say she was lonely? And here she is, having a good time, with someone paying attention to her.
Her hair is falling against her cheek, a silky fan. Blue-Patsy, Patricia- looks really happy and suddenly, just a little, my stomach loosens. After what she said about Casper not liking her like she liked me, shouldn't she be allowed to have this?
She gives me a big grin as I slowly edge in the door, excitedly telling me about Riley treating her to drinks at the Tap Room, dinner at the Grill. He's going to take her on a drive in the morning, she says, see the sights.
My stomach jumps. He's never taken me for a drive. She looks really pleased, her fingers petting the strings of the guitar. I look over at Riley, but he's picking at the label on his beer bottle.
Maybe he's just making promises to her he can't keep, being nice, and he' Il just disappoint her. Because: with what car? And where? Is he going to blow off his shift? I start to get a little angry.
I sit down with a thump on the burgundy velvet sofa. Riley looks up, finally noticing me, and leans over, pushing up a leg of my overalls and kissing my knee.
"Oh, hey, yeah, your landlord came by." Blue puffs on her cigarette. "Lonnie?"
"Leonard," I answer dully. She chews her lips, concentrating on the placement of her fingers on the Hummingbird's strings. She has pretty fingernails, white and well filed. "He wanted to know how long I'm staying, 'cause the room's so small and all, and you know, maybe you'd have to pay some extra money."
My face drains of color. Blue sees this and quickly shakes her head.
"Don't worry, Charlie, I have money and plus, I'm gonna work off the extra rent." She beams. "I'm the new building handyman. I didn't go on all those construction site visits with my dad for nothing, you know. Did you see the stairwell? I fixed it today. We could be roomies forever." She smiles wide, her eyes shiny.
She looks so happy, and expectant, that I kind of melt. It's been sort of nice having her, for a little bit. She's not the same as she was in Creeley.
The girls at True Grit, Temple and Frances and Randy, they talk about their roommates all the time. It might be fun, having a girl to live with. "Yeah," I say, trying to laugh a little. "That might be cool, Blue."
Riley laughs, too, but it has a sharp edge to it. "Hey now, Blue! Don't talk that way. I don't wanna lose my girl to her bestie. She's the only thing keeping me upright. I call dibs." He squeezes my knee a little too hard.
Blue raises her eyebrows. She tries to meet my eyes, but I stand up and offer to get everyone more drinks. I keep getting everyone more drinks, and myself, too, until I stumble just as much as they do.
I let myself get heavier and heavier because I wanted Blue to be different when she came out, I wanted her to be better, so that I could be braver about being better, too.
Maybe this is just the way it's supposed to be.
Later, in his room, the house quiet now that Blue has fallen asleep on the couch, hands snuggled between her knees, Riley exhales against my shoulder. His room is cool; the windows are open.
He's behind me, pressing me against him, his breath against my cheek. "Your friend, she was just talking shit, right, about rooming with you? I don't know how I feel about that."
I close my whirling eyes. I'm so tired of drinking, and cleaning up after him when he's too high. Dragging him to bed. Getting him up for work. Where am I? What am I doing?
My voice skips, my throat is sore from cigarettes, but I push it out and it comes out angry and I can tell he feels it; his body shrinks back, just a touch.
"You won't even let me have a friend? Like, just one friend?" My words are slurry and I start to panic a little. I don't want to lose it, but the ball is getting bigger, the alcohol is pushing it along greedily.
"Hey, now." Riley's voice is soft. "I didn't-"
"I mean, do you know how hard it is to be around just you all the time? When you're so fucked up?"
Riley is silent. My voice gets louder. I push his hands away, press myself against the wall, the window open above me. Can the neighbors hear me?
"You never ask me anything about myself. You've never even asked me about my scars. Or about my parents. Blue at least knows, she understands
bb)
"Hey, listen, everybody's got shit, honey, I just didn't ask because-"
"You didn't ask because I don't think you really care, as long as I'm here when you need me to be." A cookie or a book or a record on a shelf, like Julie said.
I roll over. I can barely make out his face because of my spinning head and the darkness of the room. He's so drunk, too, his eyes slopping down his face. Is he even going to remember this? "Here's all of it, Riley, here you go. Here's my shit.
"T had a friend and she tried to kill herself, and it was my fault. And I broke my mother's nose and she kicked me out. There was never a heating grate, but here's what there was: a loaf of bread can last a week, but you get stopped up." My words are tumbling out, caught in slurry clouds in my throat, but I can't stop.
"When I ask you for change, you'll give it to me because I'm small and I look sad and I'm dirty and you have some secret thoughts about me, because I'm small and sad and dirty. You think maybe you could do things to me, and I would let you, because I need money. And I know this, so when I say we should walk to the park and talk some more, privately, you're happy to come with me, you're excited and nervous."
Riley whispers, "Don't." He covers his face with his hands.
"T won't look at you in the park when my friends jump you from the bushes. Or when you cry because they're beating you with chains, taking your money, ruining your good suit. I've done my part. Why do you have so much cash in your wallet, anyway? You're so fucking stupid, man, so fucking stupid."
Riley says Stop, but I don't, because I want to hurt him, just a little and just a lot, for how he looked at Regan, or whatever might have happened with Wendy, or the way he laughs with Blue and won't let me be her friend, but mostly because I'm so tired.
I'm so tired of drunk and desperate. I'm tired and angry at me. For letting myself get smaller and smaller in the hopes that he would notice me more. But how can someone notice you if you keep getting smaller?
I kick the sheets off, claw my way over him, still talking, even as I jam my overalls up and try to slot the straps. I can't. My hands fumble. I just tie the fucking straps around my waist.
"If you try to make it by yourself, a guy tries to rape you in a tunnel and he's crazy high and strong. He gets his hands all the way down in your pants, his fingers inside you, his shoulder against your mouth so no one can hear you scream. Maybe two guys save you, two nice guys. If you pack up with a group, you better remember the rules of the group, you better remember who runs the group or he will try to hurt you, too."
I lean down close to Riley's face. He shuts his eyes tight. "I lived in a sex house. Someone tried to sell me for money. So I tried to die. There's my story, Riley. When do I get to hear yours?"
I'm panting. He's got both arms crossed over his face.
"Riley," I say, my voice hoarse. "Riley, we have to stop. You have to stop. I don't want you to die, Riley. Please, stop. I don't want you to die. Will you stop?"
His voice is stronger than I expected.
"No."
I almost trip, stumbling out of the room. I pull Blue off the couch by her shirt. She wobbles as she finds her footing. "What the fuck, Charlie... whaaat?" Her hair is in her face. I yank her outside, shoving my boots on as she trips across the porch, jamming her feet into her sandals. "What the hell? Did you guys fight or something?"
"T just want to go. Let's go. Please, just hurry up, Blue." I run down the porch steps, taking big gulps of air. I don't know what just happened, I'm confused and drunk, my skin itches. "I need to be somewhere safe. Please. Home."
"Yeah, okay, yeah." Blue buttons up her jeans and trots down the porch. She's still half-asleep, drunk.
I don't want to drink anymore I don't want to drink anymore I don't want to drink anymore I don't want to be lonely.
I have to hold her up as we walk; her body is loose and jellylike. I say, softly, "Blue, let's stop, let's just stop with all this, okay? You know, messing up."
"Cool," she murmurs. "That's cool, okay, all right."
"Please."
The sky is milky with clouds. I can smell the sweetness of Blue's shampoo buried somewhere under all the alcohol and cigarettes. It's not lost on me, either, that Riley never called out as we left, or ran to the porch. Or anything.
The ball inside me picks that up, too, adds it to the pile.
---------------------------In the morning, holding two cups of coffee from the café down the street, my head splitting open from my hangover, I gaze at the wall in the stairwell. Blue was right; she plastered the holes and cracks, sanded them down. The wall is smooth and fine. Blue looks proud.
The foyer of the building smells clean; Blue was standing by a sopping mop and bucket when I got back with the coffees. She'd done the work on the walls the day before; now she was cleaning the hallway and foyer to get a good look at the hardwood floor, see what sort of sanding work might need to be done. She was remarkably fresh after a long night of drinking.
I don't think she remembers last night. I'm sure Riley doesn't. It took all my strength when I went out for coffee not to go in the opposite direction and turn the corner and walk up his porch steps and-
Sweat glows faintly on her forehead. "What can you do with an English major?" she asks. "Apparently, this." She laughs, making a funny face.
"UW-Madison," she says sharply. "I'm not a total loser, Charlotte."
"T know that, Blue. I think this is pretty cool."
"This is your big day! Are you excited?" She takes one of the coffee cups and sips gratefully. "Fuck, my head."
I nod. "Yeah, I am." I think about it some more, pushing thoughts of Riley away. "I am, I really am excited."
"Cool. You should be. Meet me here later and we'll walk over to the gallery together?"
"Yes, sure thing. I'm gonna go take a nap before work, okay?"
Blue salutes me and I head up to the room. My stomach is in knots, though. I'm still upset about the fight with Riley, and wondering if he'll even be at home, or come to the show later. We feel unfinished somehow, and I don't like it.
---------------------------I work from five until seven and then Temple tells me I can leave for the art show. She's got Tanner working the counter while she works the espresso machine. People are crowded into the café, wearing the craziest costumes, faces dark and deathly. Julie's outside ladling warm cider from a giant tin tub.
Tanner set up the coffee urns on the tops of the pastry cases, with stacks of to-go cups and a box for money. Temple printed a big sign: ON YAH HONAH COFFEE, 1 DOLLAH. Linus is working the grill and Randy's subbing on dishes and running food. "It's cool," Temple says. "We got it. You go rock it, girl."
It's an absolute madhouse on the avenue for All Souls, or Dia de los Muertos. Belly dancers, kids and adults dressed all in black with their faces painted like skulls; the little kids have flimsy golden wings strapped to their backs. Fire-breathers, stilt-walkers, bagpipers with skirts and skull faces. The noise is amazing, with every sound being undercut by massive taiko drums. People carry giant skeletons on sticks, with top hats dangling off the skulls. One woman is all in black with her face painted like a gold skull and her eyes rimmed in black, like pits. She's carrying a black umbrella with miniature skulls dangling from the edges. A group of people dressed in white, flowing gowns and with faces painted like sugar skulls (something Temple had to show me on her phone: the face is painted white and then overlaid with colorful, flowerlike designs) hold a twenty-foot-long papiermaché snake above their heads. Cops and cop cars, people in masks, stoned-looking people with all sorts of instruments wandering around. I spot the punks from the Dairy Queen hanging out in front of the Goodwill, smoking cigarettes and scowling at the crowd. They, too, have whitened their faces, drenched their eyes in black. The girl punk latches on to me, flicks her tongue from her purple mouth. I stick to the sidewalk on the other side of the Avenue, gliding among the people. The sound of the crowd, of the various drums and music, is deafening. The police stay at the edges of the procession, try to keep everyone in the street, but it's hard; people duck in and out, shout and laugh. There are mimes and arts and craft booths everywhere. The fireeaters drift past me and I gasp as a woman stops right in front of me and eases the flame gently inside her mouth and down her throat. She pulls it out and spits, racing away. I fight my way through the underpass and escape to the other side of the street, breaking from the throng of people and walking to my apartment, All Souls trailing its cries and drums behind me.
Blue isn't in my room. Her clothes are strewn on the futon, though, and the air is dense with cigarette smoke. I swear at the dirty mess she's left behind: full ashtrays, lipsticked drink glasses, crumpled bags from the deli down the street. Shavings of lettuce and tomato are strewn across the carpet. Clouds of toothpaste spit cling to the sides of the sink. I stare for a moment at Blue's fancy phone on the card table; it has a spidery crack down the front, like someone threw it. I get a weird feeling in my stomach. Blue always treats her phone very gently.
Now, looking around the whole apartment, at the whole mess, I realize something is wrong, something's happened. Where's Blue? Maybe she's at Riley's. I take a breath, try to not to feel weird about that, either. Maybe Blue just got bad news or something and threw a tantrum. I'm torn between running to Riley's right away to see if she's there and getting ready. I do some breath balloons. I decide I'm going to get ready. Blue must have just gotten mad about something stupid. I'll get ready, then head to Riley's.
This is the first time I've worn something other than cutoff overalls in months. I found a loose black cotton skirt at the Goodwill and a dark brown peasant blouse. I slip into them, put on the sandals I found in an alleyway, and splash water on my face. In the tiny mirror in the bathroom down the hall, the mirror that only shows a portion of my face at any given time, I smooth my hair down. It's almost over my ears now. I do an experimental tuck, looking at all the empty holes in my ears. I guess it's kind of nice to see my natural color after so long, after so many years of dying it red, or blue, or black. A deep blond, threaded with dark brown.
I think my face looks better than it did all those months ago; my skin is clearer, there's less color underneath my eyes. I wonder if Riley ever thinks I'm beautiful, or pretty, or even something, because he's never said so. Thinking of him makes me feel bad all over again. Last night gives me a little funny knot in my stomach.
No, he said.
I look at myself in the mirror. No matter what, I tell myself, I'm not drinking tonight.
Back in my room, rooting through Blue's green duffel bag, I find a pinkish tube of lip gloss, run it across my mouth. I pencil my eyes with her eyeliner, smudge the color with my fingers for what I hope is a smoky, owlish look. I just try to do what I watched Ellis do all the time, when she did her makeup.
I wiggle my toes in the sandals, feeling vaguely uncomfortable. The blouse, the skirt, the gloss; they're all too much new all at once. I kick off the sandals, tug on my black socks and my Docs. I'm nervous, and ready, but first I need to find Blue.
Riley's guitar is on his porch, along with his cigarettes and beer. He's blasting ska music inside. The whole street is noisy, with people gathered on porches and in yards, drinking, grilling, and laughing. Crowd noise and drums from All Souls rumble through the sky.
I gather the cigarettes and beer bottles and carry them into the house.
Blue is sitting on the floor in the middle of the living room with her back to me, hunched inside a billow of smoke, album sleeves spread before her. "Blue," I call out, but she doesn't hear me over the music.
I touch her shoulder and she jumps, ashes drifting to her bare knees. She Spins around and her eyes are saucer-wide; the pupils jump and skitter. "Blue?" I wrinkle my nose at the smell of burning plastic and realize it's Blue: she's the thing that smells like burning plastic. She wipes her face, pushes the ashes off her knee, and grinds the cigarette into the floor with a balled fist. The whole house smells like it's burning; something chemical that makes my eyes water. It takes me a moment, but I realize what's happening.
Blue's eyes well up. She croaks my name.
"Oh my God." I back away, dizzy, my nostrils burning. I feel sick to my stomach. "What did you fucking do? Why did you do this again, Blue? Your teeth."
It's all I can think: Your beautiful teeth.
The pipe is on the floor, by her bare knees. A long cascade of drool is hanging from her chin.
Something flickers in her eyes; a grief suddenly etches itself over her face, drawing down the skin of her cheeks.
She says, Louisa set herself on fire. I start shaking so hard the bottles in my hands clink together.
Blue's fingernails scrape at my boots. She's trying to keep me near her. Her breathing is scratchy and hoarse and her eyes can't stay still in her face. I kick her away, backing off. Louisa? Louisa is gone? My body goes cold, then hot, and then numb.
My ears fill up with ocean and thunder. Louisa. Ellis. This can't be happening again.
I stumble toward the kitchen, calling Riley's name. I'll be okay if I can find Riley. Riley will hold me, keep all my bad things in. He can do that, at least for right now, right? Like he did when I was sick. I can count on him for at least that.
Black dots swim in front of my eyes; my skin is prickling; something claws at the inside of my throat.
Behind me, Blue crying, a thin, reedy whine. sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry. On fire. Louisa on fire. I can't breathe. The first thing I comprehend in the kitchen is the flash of matted red and yellow, Wendy's face smeary over Riley's shoulder, that pointy-toothed grin focused on me. He's pushing at her so violently, her head bobbles, doll-like and loose. They're fucking right there on the kitchen counter, his face pushed into her neck, her bare legs dangling at his hips, jean shorts caught on one of her toes.
Wendy makes a kind of hiccup and winks at me.
In the other room, the record suddenly skids to a stop, a long, terrible rip as Blue drags the needle. Wendy's eyes are popped like swirly lollipops.
The beer bottles slip from my hands and shatter.
She laughs. "Go back to your blades and butts, little girl." Another hiccup.
Riley's head wobbles up. He turns around. I do not recognize the face he is wearing. It is a different face and filled with a fury that makes me so frightened my whole body disappears into numbness. I cannot move.
He jerks at his brown pants, pulling them up to his thighs, advancing on me. I'm frozen. He is shouting at me, but I am leaving myself, I am disassociating, I am floating away from my frozen body. Just like with Fucking Frank. With my mother.
He pushes the girl that is me hard into the wall. The framed Little Crises Everywhere album cover behind her falls to the ground. The glass shatters, nicking the backs of her calves, littering the floor around their feet.
He's shouting. There's nothing here! Don't you see? Dont you get it? Moisture from his mouth coats the girl's cheek. Somehow, she finds her hands. She beats at his chest.
Fire, fire, everywhere, inside her.
I don't know who you thought I was, but this is it. He mashes the girl's cheek into the wall. Get out of my house, he whispers hoarsely to her. Go back to where you came from.
Just get out. The procession has reached its final destination in the middle of downtown. The urn is burning, great plumes of smoke and wishes and prayers for the dead billowing into the air. I have come back to myself in the middle of pandemonium, in the middle of people weeping for the dead, my vision blurry with wetness, black rising inside me. All around me now, the skull faces seem to whisper and clack their teeth. I knock into the heads of children as I run. A woman in black is crying on the ground, her face paint smeared. I think of Louisa as people shove at me, tongues wagging at my face. Louisa who ran out of space, Ellis who went too deep. An image of Louisa comes to me, a nimbus of flame, red-gold hair afire. Chanting washes over me, drums and bagpipes make an ocean in my ears. At the corner by Hotel Congress I see Ellis dancing to the Smiths, and I stop short, my body buffeted and tossed by others. I try to turn away, but there she is again, Ellis bent at her sewing machine, the tip of her tongue at the corner of her mouth. Ellis whispers in my ear late at night in her bed, explaining exactly what a certain boy did to her and how it felt. Ellis punctures my ears with a sterilized pin and hands me wine for the pain. The first time we took acid together at a party we spent hours staring at each other, laughing as we watched each other's faces mutate and swirl into different colors. Listening to Ellis have sex with a boy in a garage, I smelled oil and paint thinner and wondered how much longer it could last. Getting kicked out of school while Ellis stayed behind and falling away from her, the wolf boy and then her parents making her cut me out. Ellis liked to run around, she liked to break rules, but she liked to go home, too, to her downy bed and potato chips and ice cream and a mother who still liked to brush out her hair with her fingers and thought her frequent changes of hair color were the sign of a free spirit. I break through a knot of skeletons, twist around, I've lost my way. Ellis's fat tears as her father, Jerry, sent me away, nowhere to go, I'd lived with them for weeks. The pills on the floor were not mine, they were the boy's, but Ellis kept quiet. Ellis's texts after he'd broken up with her. 2 much. Smthing hrts. Yes, something is wrong. Ellis and Louisa and Riley and Blue and Evan and my father, dead and drowned in the long river, his sadness weighing him down. Is my sadness because of him, or is my sadness because I am of him? Holes. Human holes. I whip my head around the crowd, looking for a hole out of all these human holes, these thousands of faces wishing the spirits to a better place, sorting the souls of the dead. They all have black heads with holes for eyes, holes for mouths, strenuous gaping maws of death. There are too many people in my head. I claw at my body to get them out, to peel out the blackness spreading inside me.
I'm running blind, ghosts swallowing me.
---------------------------Dark. My room is dark. All dark. I am all dark.
I fought my way out of All Souls and it was like old days, old times, making myself hidden and smaller on the street, and I found an alley, a Dumpster, and fitted myself between that and the brick wall of a building, darkness everywhere around me.
And now I am back, hollow, and my room has been trashed. The green duffel bag, Blue's purse, her clothes, everything is torn and ripped, stomped on and cut up. A half-empty bottle of whiskey quivers on the card table. Lipstick has been smeared all over my mural wall, the faces bloody slashes. She wrote Love, Wendy!
Did they come here together after he chased me away? Did they come here together to ruin my things, laughing, high? Was this another way for them to get off ?
The easy chair leaks stuffing, a knife lying innocently on the cushion. I strip off all my new clothes and stand in the middle of the floor, naked. You never get better.
I take four swallows of the whiskey. A hundred bees buzz in my ears. The little workers inside me sharpen claws, gather nails. They are singing. I drink some more, get down on my hands and knees, and crawl to Louisa's Suitcase in the kitchen, push over the milk crate that held my dishes so they clatter and break on the floor, a thousand white stars, a thousand pieces of salt. I heave at the suitcase, wedged tightly under the tub, until it gives.
A little sound, a cry, escapes from my mouth. My sketchbook is gone. The photographs and my old drawings, shredded. And my kit, my kit, stomped on and dented and emptied out, gauze strewn everywhere in the suitcase, my glass smashed to bits.
Why did I listen to Casper, to Mikey? What was I trying to do, anyway? Thinking things would be any different? Telling me to be quiet. To breathe. To let everything pass. What a load of shit.
I kick the suitcase away and stand up. I close my eyes, drink the last of the bottle, smash it against the wall. I am dark, dark, all dark. I have to cut it out, this thing in me that thought I could be better. I have to remember how stupid I was, how fucking stupid-
I stop. Is this how Ellis felt, this moment of certainty? The text messages flicker in front of my eyes.
Smthing hrts. U never sd hurt like this. 2 much. A sparkling lake of bottle glass is beneath my feet. I grind down into it. Let my skin soak up the lake of glass. How powerful am I? How powerful am I. I can grind the glass to my face, erase my eyes, eat glass, and disappear from the inside. There, the window, my hands, that hand, balled and aching. That hand, a fist, give me more, give me more glass, I can drink it all. The glass raining over me from the broken window, it feels like home.
---------------------------There are men here and I want them to finish up and go. I'm not done. Could you please leave me until I'm done? I need to cut myself away piece by piece until there is nothing left.
I wish the men would stop talking. I wish the men would stop crying. I wonder why the men are crying.
The warmth of a wet washcloth. The smear of ointment. The clean smell and gentle press of medicated gauze, the zip of white tape. The men are no longer crying. There is a woman now. She is not my mother.
I wish I could open my eyes. I don't want to open my eyes.
I hear the sound of crying again and now I recognize that it's me, I am crying.
---------------------------Now it's a woman's voice and a man's voice and the night is moving fast. I'm bobbing up and down on a sea, dark above me, dark all around. Dark inside me.
The woman says, "I'lI kill him myself." The man laughs, but not in a cruel way. "Who couldn't see this coming?"
The woman says, "Not the fucking teenager in the backseat, that's for sure. Dear God, we are going to need junk food. Lots of junk food."
The sea shakes. The voices get farther and farther away and then there is nothing for a long time. Then the sea shakes again and something grabs my leg. I want to yell, but I can't. My mouth is filled with wet stones, like before, the very before. Before Creeley. My mouth stones have come back to me.
The man says, "She's still pretty out of it, but her dressings look good. She's gonna have a shitload of trouble walking for a few days, though."
The woman says, "You asshole, did you eat all the Cheetos?"
The man says, "Did you catch all that about her friend, what was she saying? Like, her friend's a vegetable or something."
The woman's voice is sad. "I had to stop listening."
I stop listening.
The woman and the man have left again. Rain spatters on the sea. I have to go to the bathroom.
I have to go to the bathroom. No one answers, because I have not said it out loud. I feel around with my hand and familiar pain shoots up my arm. I'm in the backseat of a car, ridges of the fake leather under my fingernails, a square, unlit light in the drooping fabric of the ceiling. I push myself up and blink. I have to go to the bathroom. All I can see from the window is blackness, shadowy trees.
Gingerly, I ease over to the car door, bite my lip to keep from crying out, and push the door open, feeling the stretch and heat of my torn arms and an odd burning on my stomach. I haul my leg out and lean forward to stand up. As my toes hit the ground, lightning cracks through the soles of my feet.
I pitch forward, smashing my mouth and nose into hard dirt. I wail, inhaling dirt, and start to choke.
Hands roll my body over, brush dirt and stones from my eyes and mouth. I blink.
Linus's wrinkled, sun-leathered face. Tanner's shit-eating grin. The matching connect-the-dot freckles on their faces.
I spit dirt from my mouth. I have to pee. I move my hands, pat myself so they' ll know what I mean.
They burst out laughing. "That's going to be pretty painful." Tanner grins.
Linus pushes the bucket underneath me and spreads my legs. My ass is on part of the backseat. Linus pulls an ugly pair of sweatpants off me. She glances at my thighs and then looks up at me, her face surprised. Of course. How could she know about those scars? She only thought I had them on my arms. "Girl," she says, but nothing else. She sighs.
She apologizes about the pants; they were the first things she grabbed out of her backpack when she and Tanner went to my room, looking for me. She didn't know at first what Hector and Manny and Leonard were doing, she tells me, so she got angry, pulling them away, roughing them up a bit. Linus is a strong woman.
Linus says, "Then I saw they were crying. And drunk, too, but trying to clean you up as best they could with paper towels and handkerchiefs." She tells me they were all dressed up for the opening but came back when I never showed.
My pee spatters into the bucket. Linus waits until I'm finished and then hands me a tissue and empties the bucket by a tree. She tosses the bucket into the trunk of the car.
"Stepping in the glass, that was a nice touch, Charlie. You'll be paying for that for days." She jimmies the sweatpants back up my shivering legs, heaves them up my ass, and pulls them to my waist. She eases me back into the car.
"Your friend Blue said you might be quiet for a while. I have to say, it's a little unnerving."
Her smile is sad and resigned. "We're at a cemetery in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Did you know Tanner is my brother? We stopped off for a quick visit with Dad." Farther away, in the blackness, Tanner is kicking a tombstone and spitting on the ground.
"We didn't really get along all that well with old Dad."
She wipes her face, hard, with the palms of both hands and then calls out to Tanner, tells him it's time to go.
Tanner glances at me in the rearview mirror, the corners of his mouth salty with potato chips. "It looked worse than it really was." He works the salt from his mouth with his tongue. "Remember? I'm studying to be an EMT? I had my practice bag with me. Fixed you right up."
The sky rolls by the window, black dotted with thousands of snow-white stars. I wonder what time it is. My hands drift under the sweatshirt Linus dressed me in, skim over the bandages there.
I am Louisa now. I have no room left.
I feel hollow, but not from hunger. I try to locate something in the hollowness, but I can't. My back aches from lying on the car seat. All of me aches. I sit up, ignoring the sparks of pain tearing across my stomach. Tanner has fallen asleep. His head lolls against the rolled-up window.
Linus clears her throat, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. "Riley's dealer Wendy stole your money and trashed your room. She followed your friend home after you took off. Beat her up pretty good. That skinny guy on your first floor-guy with a lot of books? He's taking care of your friend. Riley and Wendy stole somebody named Luis's car, bought some more drugs who knows where, and started driving out to the casino. After they cleared out the True Grit night deposit, that is. | mean, you know, he's been stealing for months, too, to buy his shit." She tightens her fingers on the steering wheel, keeps her eyes on the dark road.
I think of all the times he gave me money and I went to Wendy's house for him. How Julie was so worried about the register being low on count. I close my eyes. I'm so ashamed.
"He goes on benders, our Riley, though he mixed in a lot of other shit with this one. He's a chipper, but I bet you figured that out, right?"
Riley's cherrywood box. The minuscule crystal-filled bags, the eerie, burning plastic smell.
"They didn't make it to the casino, Charlie." Linus nibbles a Cheez Doodle. "Riley flipped the car. The skank is pretty hurt, but Riley, being Riley, is pretty much okay. He always seems to come out on top, that Riley."
Outside the diner, a pink dinosaur with peeling paint growls, his mouth missing teeth. I've been seeing a lot of kitschy roadside things from the car window as we drive: dinosaurs, robots, rocket ships, bulbous-headed aliens. Is that what New Mexico is? Fake dinosaurs and aliens? Land of the lost.
I watch Tanner and Linus through the car window. They're sitting in a booth. He chews a hamburger and talks on his cell phone. Linus stirs her tea and writes in a notebook. Once, at the coffeehouse, she told me she journals every day, "to keep things straight in my head."
I wonder if they'll bring me something to eat or if Tanner will give me more pain pills. Linus doesn't want him to; I heard them whispering when they thought I was asleep. But I do want them; I want to keep myself formless, adrift. I don't want to land yet.
The sky here is different than in Tucson, a brighter blue, almost candyish. The clouds seem to hang in it so gently, like puffs of smoke. The car is thick with the smell of snack food, sugary soda. A fly creeps slowly across the ceiling. I think of Riley in his kitchen, his terrible stranger's face. The ache rises up in me again, howling and angry. I press my hands hard against my eyes.
Linus is in the passenger-side seat now, sleeping. It's night again. Warm desert air trickles into the car. I wet a finger in my mouth and stick it into the empty potato chip bag, suck on the salt, think of Jen S. that night in Rec, when she sucked salt from the popcorn bowl. That all seems millions of years ago. The clean hospital, a nice doctor, a warm bed. Now I'm back to where I was: drifting, hurt.
When they realized they'd forgotten to feed me, the only place they could find was an Allsup's with dehydrated, suspect burritos. Tanner brought out a bag of potato chips and Gatorade, pretzels and Coke.
Tanner inhales deeply. "God, I love New Mexico. If you thought Tucson was a freak show, you ain't seen nothing yet."
He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. "You feel dizzy? We're going up in elevation. You'll feel better after a few days. Keep drinking the Gatorade."
Whenever I see them in my head, in the kitchen, I try as hard as I can to black them out, but the heat starts up again inside me, the shame, and there they are, pushing at each other, her wet mouth smirking at me and Riley turning around, so drunk, and something else, too, and shouting at me, telling me-
I do cry a lot in the backseat, my face against the window, Linus and Tanner up front, watching the road. They don't say anything, just let me make noise. I drift in and out of sleep, my face rolling against the vinyl seat, my feet throbbing, the pain cresting and receding like an ocean wave. Murmurs from the front seat reach me slowly, as though through a long tunnel. Words funnel around me: treatment center. Messages. Mother. Riley.
Riley. Riley. I bury my head in the seat, sobs backing up in my throat.
And, creeping in, like mice after a house has gone to sleep: Ellis. How she felt before she did it. This ocean of hurt and shame. The one she was drowning in.
And I let her drown.
I wake, dimly aware that the car has stopped. Tanner gets out, stretches his legs. Linus unbuckles her seat belt and smiles back at me. "Up, up, kid," she announces cheerfully.
An elderly man in fuzzy slippers waves to us from a wide wooden porch at the top of a dirt-and-gravel driveway. There are dozens of wind chimes hanging from the rafters of the porch, tinkling like glass in the slight breeze. It's much colder here than it was in Tucson. I shiver in the backseat of the car, watching them all.
The man is in a teal bathrobe, drinking a glass of wine. His hair sticks up like white tufts of cotton. Tanner and Linus cross the driveway, hug him deeply, and return to the car for me, the man following slowly behind them. He stoops down a little bit as they extract me, his eyes as curious as a bird's.
"Oh, yes," he murmurs. "Oh, yes, I see. Oh, dear."
The house is warm as Tanner and Linus bring me in, helping me down a hallway to a small room with a single bed and one window. I take in the large, ornate wooden cross on the wall. I think of the cross I stole from Ariel. I'm glad I returned it, even if I never told her it was me.
They arrange me on the bed and drape a blue wool blanket over my body. Tanner presses two pills onto my tongue, holds a glass of water to my mouth. Through the curtainless window, I can see the sky and its deliriously fat, white stars. I sleep for two days.
On the third day, my feet throb less when I set them on the floor. I hobble, dehydrated and dizzy, down the hallway to find a bathroom. Large framed photographs line the adobe walls, black-and-whites of people, old adobe churches.
In the bathroom, colorful crosses and fragrant bundles of sage have been tacked up. Plump rolls of soft toilet paper are stacked in white towers next to the toilet. There is no shower, only a deep, deep tub. I sit on the toilet, touch the gauze on my arms, my stomach. I think about peeling it off and looking, but I don't. I stay in the bathroom for a long time, listening to the silence, watching a moth flutter on the windowsill. I think this is the most beautiful bathroom I've ever been in. I never thought a bathroom could be this beautiful. That someone would take the time to make it so calming, so pretty.
The old man is at a long pine table in the main room, holding a newspaper very close to his face. There are bowls of plump fruit and nuts on the table, a platter with a baguette and a plate of creamy butter. He looks over his glasses at me.
"Coffee?" He pours me a cup from a French press, nudges a carafe of milk across the table. "The milk is warm, if you take milk. My grandchildren are feeding the horse."
I slather a piece of baguette with butter. I'm hungry now; my stomach makes fierce noises. I bite the baguette; it's so light and crispy, it shatters against my sweatshirt, leaving me showered in crumbs. The old man laughs. "Happens to me all the time. I've never been ashamed of making a mess when eating."
I brush the pale crumbs away. The baguette is pillowy inside, moist. The house is silent except for the sound of my chewing and the occasional rustle of the old man's newspaper. Gradually, I realize it's quiet outside, too. Strangely quiet. No cars, no voices, nothing. "Did you know Quakers believe silence is a way of letting the divine into your body? Into your heart?" He shakes out the paper and leans in close to me. His eyebrows are like sleeping white caterpillars. "I've never been afraid of the quiet, have you? Some people are, you know. They need tumult and clatter.
"Santa Fe. High desert country. Isn't it beautiful? I've been in this house for forty-two years. This wonderful silence you can hear-what a funny thing I have just said-makes it the most divine place on earth. To me."
He reaches over and curls his hand around mine. His skin is dry, dusty.
"Tt's a pleasure to have you in my divine home, Charlotte."
I feel the press of hot, grateful tears in my eyes.
---------------------------His name is Felix and he's Linus and Tanner's grandfather. Linus leads me around the house, pointing at paintings on the walls, sculptures arranged in corners and in the backyard, a huge expanse that looks out over rolling hills and the horse's stable. She takes me into a cavernous building flooded with light streaming from the skylights in the ceiling, where various canvases are hung on the walls and cans of paint, buckets of brushes, and industrial-sized containers of turpentine abound. Canvases are stacked three deep against some of the walls. A loftlike space has been constructed at the far end; a table with an old typewriter and a plain chair sit on the upper deck. There's a wide stairwell leading up to the loft. Beneath it are cluttered, top-heavy bookshelves. A young woman works quietly at a high pine table in the comer of the studio, sorting slides, holding them up to the light and studying them before placing them in different piles. "That's Devvie," Linus says. "His assistant. She lives here, too."
I limp around the studio, touching Felix's things gently, the pencils, the stray pieces of paper, the jars and tubes, the amazing and voluminous detritus: birds' feathers, stones of various sizes, old animal bones, wrinkled photographs, postcards with loopy cursive bearing exotic postmarks, a red mask, boxes of matches, heavy cloth-covered art books, jars and crusted tubes of paints, so many paints. One table has a series of watercolors on paper strewn about, slight and gentle washes of purple, conelike flowers. Another table is just books, heaps of them, open to different images of paintings and drawings, five or six Post-it notes pressed to each page with words like Climate of the palette, Echo/Answer, Don't lie. The floor is layered with old paint; I trip on a pair of battered clogs.
I look again at the canvases on the walls; I want to say they're sunsets, but they're not so literal. Something deeper, something inside the body, a feeling? Isnt it beautiful? Felix said to me. The colors are doing something together, I'm sure of it, I can feel it; playing off each other; some relationship is being described that I can't put into words, but looking at them excites me, fills me up, blunts the ache. I look at Felix's art supplies and wish I could do something right now, make something of my own. I remember what Ariel said at the art opening about Tony Padilla's boat-paint paintings: Colors by themselves can be a story. Ariel's paintings were a story beneath a surface of dark and light. I smile shyly at Linus.
"Yummy, yes?" She claps her hands, giddy.
Felix pokes the meat on the grill like it's still alive. Smoke froths his glasses and he rubs them on the edge of his shirt. I look at his gnarled fingers, the thickness of his wrists and knuckles. His skin is flecked with the faintest remnants of paint.
We're gathered around a long wooden table outside. The air is crisp. Tanner has lent me a fleece pullover. Linus is slicing a pungent white cheese and Tanner is carving slices of avocado. Devvie, the assistant, is in the house, fixing drinks and feeding the ancient, limping wolfhound. In the distance, the horse whinnies inside the stable. Strange sounds come from the dark desert beyond us. Whoops and whistles; rustling and bickering.
Felix slaps the glossy meat onto a platter and sets it on the table, flicking his napkin over his lap. He looks at the sky. "Probably one of the last times we'll be able to be out here like this." He glances over at me. "December is when we get the snow. It's the most beautiful month here."
He looks over his glasses at me and takes a long drink of wine, sighing appreciatively after he swallows.
"This heartbreak," he says, sitting at the table, placing a napkin on his lap. "And I don't mean what happened with that young man, because those things, they come and go, it's one of the painful lessons we learn. I think you are having a different sort of heartbreak. Maybe a kind of heartbreak of being in the world when you don't know how to be. If that makes any sense?"
He takes another sip of wine. "Everyone has that moment, I think, the moment when something so...momentous happens that it rips your very being into small pieces. And then you have to stop. For a long time, you gather your pieces. And it takes such a very long time, not to fit them back together, but to assemble them in a new way, not necessarily a better way. More, a way you can live with until you know for certain that this piece should go there, and that one there."
"That's an awful lot to lay on her, Grandpa," Tanner says. "She's just a kid."
Felix laughs. "Then Ill shut up. Ignore me. I'm just a blathering old fart."
I keep my head down. I don't want to cry at the table in front of these people so I fill my mouth with the salty meat. I slide my fingers under my thighs to keep them from trembling, listen to everyone chatter. I am so empty inside, so ravenous for something that I feel like I could eat for days and not fill myself.
Later, in my single bed in the quiet room, the window cracked open just a little to the luminous sky, the cool air on my face, I do think about momentous. Was my father my first momentous? He was there, and then he wasn't, and I wasn't supposed to ask about him or cry, or be anything, really, because my mother was so upset.
Maybe Ellis was a puzzle piece, a big and momentously beautiful one that I knocked out of the puzzle box. I'm not sure what Riley was yet. Maybe he was part of the assembling, too? And I'm still not done?
I'm so unwhole. I don't know where all the pieces of me are, how to fit them together, how to make them stick. Or if I even can.
---------------------------After a week, my fog lifts a little bit. I still sleep a lot, and I'm so tired, but walking doesn't hurt as much, and it doesn't seem like we're going anywhere soon, so I start investigating Felix's house, which is complicated and rambling. From the front, it appears small and square, but once you're inside, it spreads out in several directions at once, its complex nature hidden by cottonwoods and octopuslike cane chollas. (That's what the tiny book Linus gives me says they are. I take it with me when I walk outside. It distracts me to do simple things, like put a name to a plant.)
There are several bedrooms, all with plain beds and simple wooden dressers. Patterned wool blankets are folded neatly and placed at the foot of each bed. The main room is enormous, with dark, heavy beams crisscrossing the ceiling, like the bones of a skeleton, which Tanner tells me are called vigas, and there's an enormous stone fireplace against one wall. Devvie keeps it lit on the cooler nights and it's there that I like to sit, close to its warmth.
Felix has one room for just books, another with only records and a stereo and a slanted, forlorn piano in the center. The kitchen is at the back of the house, off a deck that looks out into the rolling, dark hills. The stable is down the slope, surrounded by coyote fencing.
The studio, Linus tells me, was built with something called genius grant money many years ago. It adjoins the back of the house, rising barnlike over the hills. At night, the coyotes come out, howling, wandering. Felix points out low-flying hawks to me during the day, their forms swooping over the cottonwoods in dark arcs. They cook together, Linus and Tanner and Felix: large, sumptuous meals of fruits and meats, breads and cheeses, papery spinach salads with walnuts and salty feta cheese.
"You know," Felix says to me one morning, spooning blueberries onto my plate at breakfast. "I don't want you to think I'm some old workhorse, slaving away every day at my paints and pictures. Sometimes I don't do any work at all in my studio! I just sit. Listen to music. Page through my books. Maybe write down something I remember. Maybe write a letter."
He pours more coffee into his cup. "Sometimes not working can be work, just more gently. It's important to just be, Charlie, every once in a while."
My feet keep getting better. The cuts and gouges heal up nicely, though they're still tender. Tanner takes off my arm bandages and lets me see the new slashes, the new rivers. I feel hesitantly over the fresh lines on my stomach, but I don't look down.
I didn't go too deep, he says; I didn't need stitches. "Let's think of that as a good thing." He drops the old bandages in the trash, unfurls a fresh roll of gauze.
One night while Felix is opening another bottle of wine, Linus calls me over to a tiny laptop set up on the kitchen table. It's been two weeks now and I've noticed that Linus disappears with the laptop every night after dinner for an hour. Tanner said she was talking to her kids over Skype.
All I could say was "Oh." I didn't even know she had children. Or I guess she must have told me, but I wasn't listening. Ashamed, I realized I had never really asked Linus anything about her life, or her problems with drinking, because I was so consumed with Riley.
Linus points to the screen. I squint. It's a newspaper article, with a photo of artwork on a wall. My artwork. Manny and Karen and Hector and Leonard. It's dated two days after the art show.
Linus raps me on the skull. "Look, dummy. It's a review of the gallery show. Listen." She reads from the review, which sounds nice enough, if a little snarky; the writer uses a lot of words I don't understand; I wonder why they just can't say if they liked anything or not. I catch some of what Linus is saying: ...seemingly caught adrift amid the digi-heavy and Technicolor nostalgia is a series of charcoal portraits...revealingly sympathetic... classical quirk....
"T think they liked your drawings, Charlie!" Linus nudges me in the hip. Her breath is fragrant with honey and green tea. Felix wanders over, waving a finger at Linus. "Click there, click there," he says. Linus clicks; the screen fills with the faces of Hector and Karen, Leonard with his sorrowful eyes and hopeful mouth. Felix says simply, "Very nice. Very strong line, my dear." He removes his glasses. "But you don't feel it."
I shake my head, surprised. How can he say I didn't feel it? I liked all of them and I worked hard. I wish I could answer out loud, but my words are still buried.
"Tt's all there, dear. Attention to detail. Beautiful gestural moments." He looks right in my eyes. "But you don't love this kind of drawing. Or, at least, have a complicated passion for it. You need one or the other. Ambivalence is not a friend to art."
Felix pats my cheek. "You have your skill, Charlotte. Now give your skill an emotion." He wanders back to the wine bottle. "I have a room you can use," he calls to me. "Devvie will get it ready for you tomorrow."
Linus nods. "We aren't going anywhere for a while. True Grit's closed for God knows how long. Riley stole a hell of a lot of money, you know; people haven't been paid. Might as well enjoy ourselves."
---------------------------In my small, tidy room, I lie on the bed, heart thumping, mind whirring. What did Felix mean, an emotion? I worked so hard on those pieces, looked at all the books in the library, did everything the drawing manual said, practiced and practiced. Isn't that what you do as an artist? I think back to Tony's gallery show, when Ariel asked me to come to her drawing workshop. Ariel said I would never get anywhere unless I examined myself. Made myself my subject. I choke back a laugh. What does Felix want me to do, draw myself? No one is going to want to see that, a girl with split skin and a sad face.
I press my face against the wall. I can hear them out on the back deck, listening to a soulful singer on the record player, voices mingling with the intermittent cries from the dark desert. I have nothing now. Not Riley, not Mikey, not Ellis, not my drawing. I suck in my breath, try to stem a fresh wave of sobs. I'm so tired, again. Tired of trying. My nose leaks; my eyes throb with the effort of holding tears back. I curl up, clutching my knees to my chest. I miss Riley so much, even though I know how wrong it is: his smoky, liquidy smell is ingrained in my memory; my fingertips ache when I imagine the velvety slope of his back; my heart catapults in my chest.
I rock back and forth on the bed. My mind fills with the bathroom down the hall with its box of razor blades under the sink. The kitchen with its slinky promise of knives. I uncurl myself, force myself to feel around my body, count off the scars and bandages, the sheer accumulation of my own damage.
There is nothing else I can do to myself.
Louisa comes to me then, an image out of nowhere: on fire, her fine hair rising in flame, skin melting off like butter.
I sit up so fast tape pops on my stomach. I press it back into place, wincing at the pain. My backpack's in the closet. I drop to my knees, digging inside. It's the only thing Wendy didn't destroy. Louisa's composition books are still tightly bound. I work at the tape with my fingers.
The first page of the first book begins, in small, neat black script: A girl's life is the worst life in the world. A girl's life is: you are born, you bleed, you burn.
Louisa's words hurt, but they are true, they ring through me. I read everything that night, each book. I can't stop.
---------------------------It's early morning and I haven't slept yet, Louisa's words still electric inside me. Cutting is a fence you build upon your own body to keep people out but then you cry to be touched. But the fence is barbed. What then? When I pull myself out of bed Linus tells me that Felix is letting me work in one of the empty bedrooms, the smallest one. Devvie and Tanner move a tall table, a stool, and boxes of supplies-pads, pencils, inks, pens, and paints-into the room for me. Devvie is an angular girl with a penchant for flannel shirts and track pants. She is something called ABD at New York University.
The room smells musty. Outside, the horse nickers. Tanner takes him out for a ride every morning at this time. I sit on the floor, dirt and dust sticking to the backs of my calves.
Felix said to do something I loved. Or felt complicated passion for. Ariel said to use myself. Louisa gave me the story of her life. A drunk and a drunk met and they made a mess: me. I was born with a broken heart.
I trace the scars on my legs, feel up under my shirt at the years of cuts healed and unhealed. It is all I am, now, these lines and burns, the moments behind them. A girl is born.
In the musty room, I select a sketchbook with thick, creamy paper, and dark pens. Using a ruler, I begin a frame on one piece of paper, testing the flow of the black pen, its feel in my fingers. It works like water over the paper, no pushing like with charcoal. On another piece of paper, I sketch, lightly, testing myself, testing the images that appear.
A girl is born. I start with myself: a girl with clumpy hair in a yellowy, fuzzy cardigan on the first day of a new school, all her scars hidden under the sweater and her jeans. What a sad girl she is, mouth clamped shut, eyes burning, a force field of anger and fear vibrating inside her. She watches the other kids, how easily they move around each other, laughing, adjusting headphones, whispering. She wants to say My father is in the river down the street but she says nothing. She meets a beautiful girl with wild purple hair and white, white skin. The beautiful, momentous girl smells sweet and creamy, like face powder and too much black eyeliner.
The beautiful, momentous girl is fucking angelic.
Louisa wrote, Each aberration of my skin is a song. Press your mouth against me. You will hear so much singing.
I draw and lose the hours.
As the story progresses, the character of Charlie loses more clothing, piece by piece, her pale young woman's flesh taking on more and more damage as the arc unfolds. I fall asleep on my arms on the table. I wake and resume the story. I am no good at talking, no good at making the right words reel from my brain to my mouth and out, but I'm good at this, my pictures and the words I can write. I'm good at this.
This is what Felix meant. What you do should fly through your blood, carrying you somewhere.
My fingers begin to cramp, and I need some space, and air. I leave the house quietly. I walk for a long time in the desert, finding a shaded spot under a cottonwood to rest, balancing one of Louisa's books on my knees. It's quiet and empty and full out here, in the desert, all at once. I burrow deep into Tanner's fleece.
Louisa wrote, People should know about us. Girls who write their pain on their bodies.
I read and reread her life slowly. It's difficult and it hurts, but she gave me her words and her story, every bloody bit of it.
No one bothers me. No one comes to ask what I'm doing. When I'm hungry, I go to the kitchen and make a sandwich, fill a glass of water, return to the room, and keep drawing the comic.
I think it takes three days, maybe four, I can't tell, I don't know, but at some point, I just have a feeling, something clear and final that says: Finished. For now, finished.
I gently gather all my papers and put them in order, place them in a tidy pile on the tall table, clean up the pens, dump the pencil shavings in the basket under the window. Everything Casper wanted me to say I've drawn instead. I have a voice. I have a place for my voice.
I look down at the sloppy, too-big sweatpants Linus gave me, the waistband rolled down three times, and the giant NYU 'T-shirt Devvie loaned me. I think of my overalls back in the wrecked and bloody apartment, my long jersey shirts, the clompy black boots. It's time for different things. It's time for me to speak again.
I strip off the borrowed clothes, shivering in the cool air from the open window. I wrap a gray wool blanket around myself and leave the room, quietly slipping out the back door. I sit on the steps for a long time, in the fresh cold, listening to the desert unfold around me, its chirps and squeaks and howls, listening to the sounds of Felix murmuring inside, Linus and Tanner squabbling over cards.
It sounds like home, all of it.
---------------------------A few days later, when it's time to leave, Felix hugs each of us, even me. I shrink from his touch at first and then, consciously, force myself to relax. He rubs my back with his sturdy hands. He kisses my forehead. Linus and Tanner pack the car; Devvie has made several sandwiches for us, arranged a bag of fruit and cheeses, though I suspect Tanner will want to stop for salty treats.
I adjust the waistband of my skirt. It's army green, cotton, falling just above my knees, four dollars at the Value-Thrift in Santa Fe. I look down at my plain black sneakers, the Santa Fe High School Raiders T-shirt, shortSleeved and light brown, the scars on my legs. What was it Blue said? Who gives a shit.
Linus took me shopping and automatically walked us to the denim section of the store and started sifting through hangers of jeans and overalls, thinking that was what I'd like. I left her there and wandered around. When she found me, my arms were full of plain cotton skirts and T-shirts and one pilled black cardigan with shiny silver buttons. I shook my head at her arms full of overalls and said, "Not anymore." She raised her eyebrows, smiled, and took them back to the rack.
Felix says, "Did you know, Charlotte, that there is a whole, interesting history of self-mortification?"
I stare at him, unsure of the word, but then I think I understand.
He nods. "It's true, my dear. Some people used it as a way to get closer to God." He raises his chin to me. "Are you trying to get closer to God, Charlotte?"
I shake my head. "Fuck no," I say. Felix laughs and helps me into the car.
Linus starts the car and we drive, but she stops just where we should turn onto the road, looking in the rearview mirror. I turn around. Felix is lumbering down the gravel, his fuzzy slippers raising rivulets of dust. He bends down by my window, out of breath, motions for me to lean closer.
In my ear, he whispers, "You be you, Charlotte. You be you."
---------------------------In Albuquerque, Tanner takes the backseat, falls asleep. Linus shoves the bag of pork rinds in my direction. I pour some into the palm of my hand.
"Linus," I say softly. "Why are you helping me? You don't even know me, and I've been so selfish. Like, I've never even asked you anything about yourself. And I'm sorry. That was shitty." I take a breath. It's what I wanted to say.
Her cheek is fat with food, like a squirrel's. She swallows. "I drank my kids away from me. All those years I spent trying to get sober, they stayed with their dad and they didn't want to see me, and rightly so. I did some truly horrible things that still make me want to puke with shame when I think about them."
She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. "Life without a mom is pretty shitty. They're mad. They're coming around, but real slow. They're good kids, though, which makes me think they had some kindness along the way, little kick starts of help and love. So that's what I'm doing. That's why I'm helping you. I don't know the story of your mom, but I have to believe she's hoping somebody is looking out for you."
I crush the rinds in my hand, lick the pebbles from my palm. "My mother doesn't think like that."
Linus is quiet for a long time before she answers.
"Yes. She does. Someday? If you decide to have kids, you' ll know what I mean. And it'll knock you damn flat on your ass."
---------------------------It's late when Linus drops me off in front of the building. The street is quiet, the liquor store closed for the night. I shut my eyes when we passed Twelfth Street. I didn't want to risk looking out and seeing his robin's-egg-blue house.
The foyer light is dim, but the first thing I notice is that the railing and floor have been repainted a light peach color; the entry door is a fresh, crisp white. The hallway smells like lilacs, clean; the walls have been painted a quiet, light blue. I approach the door to my apartment. I can hear music from the room and my heart sinks. Leonard must have already rented the apartment. Did he save any of my things? Maybe he put them in boxes in the basement. But where's Blue? And where am I supposed to go? My heart starts to beat very fast. As I turn to go, the door inches open.
The bruises on Blue's face are fading, but the ring around her eye is still swollen and purple-yellow. There are red lines with small dots left over from the stitches.
Blue breathes in relief. "Charlie. I'm so glad to see you." She opens the door wider. "Are you talking? Are you okay? I thought you might go back to being quiet for a while."
The room is neat as a pin, no more ashtrays, and there is a new, plain wood dresser to hold Blue's clothes. The linoleum has been ripped up and the wood beneath it sanded and painted a rose color. I realize that the linoleum would have been soiled from my blood; I feel a surge of guilt. Blue bends to run a hand across the wood. "Fir," she says softly. My slashed futon has been replaced with a double bed covered with a fluffy, inviting comforter. Blue has installed plain metal shelves in the kitchen and filled them with stacks of pink dishes and cups, jars of sauces and jams, cans of food, crackers. Another thick shelf sports a microwave. A shower curtain with a map of the world hangs from the ceiling around the tub. A cloth curtain with irises surrounds the toilet. "T like it here," she says with a shy smile.
Blue has made the apartment more of a home in six weeks than I did in the six months I was here.
On the card table, a painstaking project: Blue has been taping together the contents of my ripped sketchbook and the torn Land Camera photographs of Ellis and me. Some of the pieces are tiny; Wendy was very thorough.
Blue stutters. "It-it was Jen S. She called me after you left for work, about Louisa, and, Jesus, Charlie, I just lost it. I found Riley and we went to that girl's house. I just wanted to get high, you know? I didn't...I didn't know it was going to be that stuff, but I couldn't stop myself. Jesus, Charlie, did you know about him?"
The little crystalline bags. The plastic smell the first morning I came to wake him up. I look at Blue and start to cry. Her eyes widen in alarm. "Charlie, what?"
I tell her I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but that I lied, that I bought drugs for Riley, that everything was horrible, and that I was drowning, and that I don't want to be underwater anymore.
Blue shakes her head violently. "I'm out, Charlie. I'm really done. I'm not gonna do that stuff anymore. I promise. I like it here. It's fucking nice, this town. My God, the sun."
I press my forehead against the wall, suddenly exhausted all over again, emptied, now that I'm back.
She says, "That person I was at Creeley, that wasn't really me. Sometimes with people, you just become something, like, your role happens to you, instead of you choosing it. I let that happen when I got here. I let it slip over me, even though I didn't want to. I don't...I'm not that, Charlie. I want to be friends. I think we could help each other. I like you so much."
Her hand on my back is warm through my shirt.
"T don't want to be Louisa," she whispers. "I don't want to die. I don't want to be that, ever. Help me not be that and I'Il help you."
I believe her. She says my name. She says Louisa's, over and over. We cry like that, for hours, together, me against the wall, Blue pressed to my back. Holding each other, like you're supposed to.
---------------------------The green screen door slams shut behind me. Everyone turns around; everyone's face closes up. I hang my backpack on the wall peg, walk to the dishwasher, tie on my apron, jerk out the dish rack, and start to unload plates and cups. When I turn around with a clean dish tray, they're staring at me: Randy in her saddle shoes, Temple busying herself with the coffee urns, silvery ankle bracelets tinkling.
Randy dumps an armload of cups into the soapy water, splashing my apron. She knocks me in the shoulder lightly.
"Tt's about fucking time," she says. "We've been reopened for three days already and wondering where our favorite disher was."
My second night back at work, Julie pulls me into the office. I don't look at the couch. I try not to look at anything except my water-pruned hands as Julie tells me what I already mostly know. That Riley and Wendy totaled Luis's car; Wendy broke three ribs, cracked her collarbone, and punctured her intestine. That Wendy attacked Blue at the apartment when Blue tried to get her to stop destroying my things.
Julie twists the rings on her fingers, her voice wavering. "Riley came out with bruises, a DUI, driving without a license, a possible robbery charge for stealing the night deposit, and the theft of an automobile." She lays a hand on the bowl of lapis lazuli.
"He was in jail. Now he's up north at a men-only rehab. It's not his first time in rehab, but you probably guessed that." She clacks the stones together. Her eyes well up. "I've been doing a lot of thinking, you know? Maybe some of this is my fault, always helping him when he fucks up. He can't come back here, ever, to work. He can't. And legally, holy hell. If he wants to stay out of jail, he has to complete a yearlong work-rehab program and stay clean. And am I supposed to press charges about stealing my money?" Tears run down her cheeks. "The world is so fucking awful sometimes and then you have to really start thinking, what's my role in this awfulness? Did I make some of this awful?"
There's a heavy weight inside me. I have to get rid of it.
"Julie," I say. "I knew, I mean, I think I knew, but I didn't want to know, that he was stealing from the register. And...I helped him. I...bought stuff for him. And I'm sorry. And I understand if you want to fire me."
Julie shakes her head, wiping her eyes. "You bought stuff for him?"
I nod, my face burning with shame. I wanted him to love me.
I say it aloud, but very quietly.
Julie reaches out and takes my hand. "Love is a real shit show, Charlie, but it's not that. It's not buying drugs for someone. You don't deserve that, honey. You just don't."
I try to let her words just sit in me, rather than rejecting them. It's hard, but I do it.
I keep going, my words spilling out fast. "Linus said Grit is in real trouble. We talked about it on the way back from New Mexico and I've been thinking, well, Linus and I have been thinking, and talking, and we have some ideas about how to get Grit on track, if you want to listen."
Julie blinks, snuffling. She finds a pen and opens a notebook.
"T'm listening," she says. "Fire away, because I'm dying here."
---------------------------I like living with Blue. I like having a friend, a girl friend, again. Ellis is still inside me, and she always will be, but Blue is good in her way, and kind.
Sometimes, when I get home from my shifts at Grit, we take the bus to the midnight movie and buy salty yellow popcorn and chilly, overly iced sodas. I'm pleasantly surprised by Blue's endless supply of money. She shrugs whenever I ask; My father feels guilty, she says. Money is his salve. "It's weird," she says, her face assuming a complicated texture of pain and grief. "I don't want to talk about it. Maybe we can talk about it someday. Can we get extra butter on the popcorn this time?"
I can't sit at the card table weeping or in the tub staring at the ceiling, thinking of ways I could have done better, could have helped Riley more or gotten out sooner, saved Ellis, made myself better, because all those things are wrong, I realize; they solve nothing, wondering what could have been done; I know that now.
I have to wait my bad feelings out and that means staying busy, means working at Grit, means spending time working on my comic, rereading Louisa's composition books, thinking about who might want to read her story and mine.
It means going with Blue to meetings. It means sitting in the brightly lit basement of a run-down church on hard chairs that scrape the cement floor, drinking muddy coffee and listening to people stutter out their stories. It means really listening to them, and thinking about them, and thinking about myself.
Blue and I look around for a group like us, cutters and burners, the selfharmers, but we can't find one. Blue says, "Heh, I guess we'll just have to keep talking to each other, then, huh? Who would have thought it'd be us, eh, Silent Sue?" I miss Casper, but I understand now why she had to let go. Maybe I was, in the end, just one more hurting girl for her, but she was kind to me, and she has to be kind to others, too, because even that small kindness, even for such a brief time-it was something.
It was something.
One night Blue comes home with a shiny new laptop. Once she gets it set up, she makes me get a Facebook account. Laughing, she says, "Social media is perfect for you. It's totally for people who don't like in-person interaction. But Twitter isn't you, because it's chatty, so don't go there."
I don't do much on it, mostly just scroll around the news or look at Blue's page. But one night I see I have a friend request.
It's Evan.
I don't feel scared that he's contacted me, or nervous. I feel fucking grateful, in fact, that I can press Accept with all my heart, because he's alive, and I thought for sure that he'd be dead.
The first thing he messages me is a newspaper story. The story is a few months old, but it has a photo that stops my heart.
Evan writes, EVIL HAS BEEN CAPTURED.
The house, Seed House, was shut down, Fucking Frank arrested for selling underage girls for sex, providing drugs and alcohol to minors, and so much, much more. In the photo, his face is gaunt, no longer full and angry. He looks frightened.
And then Evan says: In other news, this is day 92 of sobriety for me. How the hell are YOU, Charlotte?
I can't stop smiling as I write back.
---------------------------The panaderia pastries sell out every day. Linus and I had the idea to get them for a discount before they threw the leftovers in the Dumpster. Julie lets Linus work on a new lunch menu with more healthy items, less reliance on potatoes, grease, and cheese. She agrees to a punch card for coffees. One day as I'm clearing dishes and lugging my tub from table to table, I look up and see a new splotch of real, vulgar graffiti on the fake brick walls of the coffeehouse. I stand, looking at the walls for a long time, turning, taking in the whole space, the amount of light from the windows high on the walls, thinking about how we can fix this.
Blue comes in one night to help paint the walls and the bathrooms, arriving with cans and rollers and brushes from the shed at Leonard's. Temple helps me haul out ladders from Julie's office and push the tables and chairs into the center of the room. Randy and Tanner work on the tops of the tables, painting them different colors, adding different patterns to some, sanding and gluing old postcards to others. Blue and Julie and I paint for hours, a soft wheat color that glows in the morning and looks ethereal at night. "But now there's nothing on the walls," Julie says. "They look so empty."
"Not for long," I answer.
I'm working the counter on Temple's smoke break one evening when Ariel comes in, tentatively, as though unsure if she's in the right place. Her mouth opens in pleasure when she sees me. "You! What a lovely surprise. I was at your show, but I didn't see you."
I take a deep breath. "I stole your cross. It was me. And I'm sorry."
Ariel dips her head. "I know. I understand. Thank you for returning it." She reaches out. "May I?" she asks. I nod.
She lays her hand carefully over mine. "I lost my son, so I know what it is like to be...empty, but full, with hell. I know you know what that means. That's all I want to say about that. But I want you to know that I am glad you are okay. I am so, so glad."
I nod, trying not to cry. She pats my hand, asks me for a double espresso. I'm relieved to be able to turn away and do something so she can't see the tears falling. She walks around while I work the machine.
"T haven't been in here in years," she shouts over the noise of the machine. "It had gotten so grungy. My friend told me to stop by." She peers at the walls. They're hung with brilliant, intricately woven landscapes: women working in fields; complicated cityscapes; a tawny mountain with a sun hovering just above.
"My goodness," she says breathily, moving closer to the walls. "These are rather exquisite. Who did them?" Her voice rings out in the new, clean café.
"The cook," I answer proudly, swiping my face dry and turning around with her demitasse. "Linus Sebold."
---------------------------Linus asks to me to find a new box of order pads for the waitstaff in Julie's office. It's a busy evening; we've been packed with a different, older crowd since we made changes. The art kids still come, but we've lost some of the rockers. I miss them, but Julie needs this thing to run, so Grit needs people who buy food and drinks, not throw up on the floor.
As I'm puttering behind Julie's desk, searching through boxes, it appears before me, tucked plain as day underneath the corner of her office phone.
A piece of paper, a phone number, his name, scribbled doodles and circles and stars.
One moment I'm looking at the paper and the next I'm saying, "May I please speak to Riley West?", feeling myself high above, floating near the ceiling, watching my hands shake as I press the phone to my ear. On the other end, there's the sound of slow feet, a heavy sigh.
"Yeah?"
Can he hear my thudding heart through my body? Does he know it's me by my silence? The words clog in my throat. Is that why I hear him sigh again, why he says, "Sweetheart"?
"Riley."
"You can't call me here, okay? Listen, you can't-" His voice is measured, careful, soft. He's trying not to attract attention, I bet. I feel a flush of anger and try to bat it down, but before I can, it's up and swinging. It's out before I can stop it.
"Do you even remember being with me, Riley? Did you even care, at all, like, ever?"
Adrenaline forces me along. "I mean, was I just a freak show for you? Was I?" I feel scared, I feel loose and lost, but each word that comes out feels powerful. A sterile, automated voice cuts into the line. This phone call will reach its limit in four minutes. That's right. I remember that; at Creeley, the community phone shut out after ten minutes.
"Charlie." He's crying, a childish whine, like something a person does when they don't want other people to hear. The sound of his crying sneaks into me, scratches at my heart. He says my name again. I scrape at my wet face with the back of my hand.
"T loved you, Riley." It hurts, saying it out loud, letting it balloon up and away from me.
"Please," he cries, "baby-"
The line goes dead.
I open the drawer in Julie's desk: a stapler; heavy, gleaming scissors; thumbtacks. Roll call of easy elixirs.
On the drive back from Santa Fe, Linus said to me, "My life is like a series of ten-minute intervals sometimes. Sometimes I want to give myself a fucking medal for making it through an hour without a drink, but that's the way it has to be. Waiting it out."
I slam the drawer shut. I have to make myself wait it out, this thundering inside me, wait it out in ten-minute intervals, five-minute intervals, whatever it takes, always, now, and forever.
I gather the order pads in my arms and walk out the door, shutting it firmly behind me.
---------------------------Temple is emceeing another open mic, this time with fewer rockers and more poets, when Linus hands me the counter phone. I have to bend down to the floor to hear the voice on the other end. I notice the dust motes and coffee grounds lingering beneath the lip of the counter and make a mental note to clean more carefully later.
"Oh, my dear Charlotte." An old man's voice, soft and crackly. "How would you like to come and work for me for a while?"
Felix Armeson says, "I'm in New York and Devvie-you remember my assistant, Devvie-has finished her dissertation. She's leaving me. I'm bereft, but I'll survive."
"T don't...what?" I lean closer to the phone, unsure if I heard correctly. "You want me to work for you? Me?"
Felix chuckles. "I need someone who doesn't mind the desert, the isolation. It's fairly boring out there, you know. I mean, there's a wonderful city nearby, but out where I am, well, you know. You were there! You'd sort my slides, put my files in order. Lots of things, really. Answering the phone, email. Ordering my supplies. It's room and board and just a little money. What do you say? I think you rather liked it out there."
I don't think about it all that long. It hurts here, I'm okay, but it hurts here, and I want to be somewhere quiet, where the ghost of Riley isn't everywhere.
There was such a stillness in the land around Felix's house. "Yes," I say. "Yes, I do want to work for you."
He'll arrange a ticket for me to New York, where I'll meet him at his hotel. He promises to take me around when he's not in the gallery, to museums, to bookstores. Then we'll fly back together. "I'm afraid to fly," he whispers. "Isn't that funny, at my age? I am going to die, after all, but I'm afraid of a little hop across the sky. I'm willing to fly you all the way out here just so I don't have to fly back by myself."
I admit that I have never flown in an airplane.
"My goodness, then," he says. "What a pair we'll make. And you'!l have that little room, too, to do your own work. Linus tells me you're working on a kind of book. I can't wait to hear about it."
---------------------------Julie and Linus stand before me, resolute. I tell them no again. "I leave in four days," I insist. "I don't want to go with you."
Linus says, "I know it seems horrible, Charlie, but he's worked really hard for this moment and I think it's important to support him in his recovery. Even assholes need help sometimes."
Julie takes my hands. "He's making his amends, Charlie. This is one of his steps. Honestly, I've never seen him like this."
They're letting Riley out for Luis Alvarez's benefit concert. He'll be accompanied by an aide; he'll wear an ankle monitor. Performing is the only way Luis's wife won't press charges against Riley for stealing Luis's car. He'll still have to do the yearlong work-rehab program. He wants me to go to the concert.
Blue sets her cup of coffee on the counter at True Grit; she's been listening to the conversation quietly. She makes the tiniest of motions with her chin, a shadowy Don't let anyone make you do anything. I've come to know all of Blue's new looks, the chin dips, the eye wideners, the disapproving scowl. In Creeley, she had only two looks: anger and misery. It's as though being here has opened Blue up in ways that haven't happened for me.
I squeegee the mop out, the handle wavering in my hand. Is it the grease on my fingers or something else?
"Okay," I say finally. "Okay."
--------------------------Blue looks at my backpack, the new pink suitcase she bought me at Goodwill. Everything is packed. Her mouth turns down a little.
"T can't believe you're going," she says quietly.
"T know."
"T mean, I think it's good. It' be good. But I'll miss you."
"T'll miss you." I take her hand.
"Felix has a computer?"
"Yes."
"You'll Skype me? Once a week?" Her eyes are intent, pleading. "Yes, definitely."
"What about a phone? Will you get a cell?"
"T can't afford that. He has a phone, I can use that."
"You'll call me all the time, you'll call me and give me his number, right? And I'll come visit. That'll be fun. Like once a month, okay?" She's breathless.
Her fingers tighten around mine. "Yes, Blue."
"You'll find meetings? I'm going to start going with Linus." "Yes, I promise."
"Okay," she says at last. Her eyes start to brim.
"Okay," I say.
"We have to hold on to each other, Charlie. We can't let go." Tears splash down her face.
"No," I answer, my throat tight.
"We aren't like other people."
"No."
"You're my family now. I'm yours. Do you understand?" This last part she says into my hair, because now she's hugging me, tightly, and I don't want her to stop, ever.
Yes, I tell her. Yes.
---------------------------The Luis Alvarez Family Benefit is packed. People are strewn all over Congress Street outside Hotel Congress in downtown Tucson. Separate stages have been set up for preshow bands and the road is blocked to cars. A mariachi band strolls through the crowd. Luis's photograph is on placards placed outside the hotel doors. He died shortly after Riley stole his car. Tiger Dean chats with a television crew, his hair pomped and his sunglasses perched on his head.
I catch sight of Mikey with Bunny, holding hands; he's no longer in dreadlocks; his hair is a short golden cap around his head. I haven't seen him since I got back.
Mikey turns and sees me. My stomach lurches as he smiles and walks over, Bunny staying behind to chat with someone. I can't help but notice the glint of plain gold on his finger. Blue stays by my side, quiet.
"Hi," he says shyly.
"Hi."
"Charlie," he says. "I'm really happy you're here. I'm really happy to see you."
I motion to his finger. "So, things are pretty different for you now."
Mikey nods. "You could say that." He laughs.
I take a deep breath. "I'm sorry for the way I acted, Mikey. Michael. I'm sorry. I should have answered your emails."
He sighs. "I figured you probably deleted them. I was going to come see you soon, anyway, at Grit. Our tour got extended for a couple of months and we did end up making that record. Things are going to happen, it looks like."
He takes a deep breath. "I have something for you. Charlie. I was going to bring it by Grit if I didn't see you here." He reaches into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out a folded piece of Paper.
"This is really difficult for me, Charlie, so let me just say it." He closes his eyes and when he opens them, he looks right at me, hard, but smiling.
My heart flips a little, nervous about what it could be. "What? What is it?" I start to unfold the paper.
"IT saw her, Charlie. We had a stop in Sandpoint. Where she is, in Idaho. And I saw her."
Beside me, Blue grips my elbow tightly, takes the paper from my shaking hand. I can barely see for all the water in my eyes. I can barely breathe. Her. Her.
Ellis. My hands shake; the paper rattles.
"Oh my God, Charlie. She's okay. I mean, she's not okay-okay, but she isn't totally gone. She's there. You have to sit with her for a while and ask her really, really, specific things, but she's there, and when I said your name, I swear to God, her whole face lit up."
Mikey is crying a little, breathing heavily. I look down at the address on the paper, her name. My body is on fire, but in a good way, an excited way.
Like, bursting-with-love fire.
Ellis, my Ellis.
"Fucking outstanding," Blue murmurs. "Outstanding." "Thank you, Mikey," I whisper. "Thank you so, so much."
---------------------------Tiger Dean gave Julie comp tickets and backstage passes. Julie, Blue, Linus, and I stand backstage, marveling at the production, the crew hustling back and forth, the energy pouring from the audience. The punk bands come out first, too loud and sweaty and writhing, but the younger kids love it, screaming and moshing. The weather is perfect, comfortable and cool, the sky cooperating by being endlessly blue and beautiful. Tiger Dean does a set with a band of young guys dressed in identical gray suits and bolo ties. The crowd loves him because he's Tiger Dean, but as Riley always said, his lyrics suck.
Regan, the singer from Grit's open mic, emerges from the opposite wing of the stage, dressed in the same raggedy black skirt she wore back then, the same beat-up Docs. She mumbles her name into the microphone and then lurches into her set. People in the crowd weave back and forth, totally into Regan. Far down at the lip of the stage, there are several men on cell phones, watching her intently and holding up second phones to record her. Julie whispers to Linus, "Scouts. Riley told me he sent his old manager her demo."
Tiger Dean walks onstage as Regan finishes singing, clasps her shoulder in a half-hug. She tromps off the stage. Tiger clears his throat.
"We have a very special guest here tonight, folks. One of my oldest and dearest friends and a fine musician I'm sure you've missed for the past couple of years." Tiger pulls out a paisley handkerchief and mops his forehead. "Now, he's been going through a real rough patch for a while now and I think he's on the mend. At least, I hope he's on the mend.
"Because I need him to write me some fucking songs," he finishes, mock-whispering. The audience laughs.
Julie leans close to me. "They only let him out to do this show. He has to go right back after. He's got an alcohol monitor on his ankle. The monitor measures your alcohol consumption through your sweat, so if he even has a tiny sip of something alcoholic, it can detect it."
Tiger leans into the microphone. "Riley West."
The audience erupts in applause, calls, and whistles. People rise to their feet, stomp the ground. My heart stammers in my chest. Blue slips her hand into mine.
And then he's there.
He appears across from us, in the opposite wing, in a simple shortSleeved button-up blue-and-white cowboy shirt with tan piping across the chest. He's wearing his old brown pants and black sneakers. I wonder where his favorite brown boots are, but then I notice the silver gleam of the alcohol monitor peeking out from the cuff of one pant leg; it wouldn't fit inside a lean boot. He's cut his messy brown hair; now you can see his whole face, which looks cleaner, less puffy. Looking at him, I realize with a pang how terrible he really looked all those months, and how I didn't see it, or how I didn't want to see it. There isn't any bulge in his breast pocket. "He's quit smoking," Julie whispers. "Cold turkey."
He's scared as hell. I can tell because he hesitates just slightly before walking out, slipping his guitar across his shoulder as he walks. His hand wavers as he raises it to the audience and then I notice something I've never seen on Riley West's face.
A furiously red blush.
He licks his lips at the microphone, adjusts it, and sips from the glass on the stool beside him. He does a double take. "This drink tastes like water. That's not like me."
The crowd laughs. Someone yells, "Riley, you look great, man!"
Riley shades his eyes and looks out over the audience. "Yeah? You want to date me? 'Cause nobody else sure will, at this point." Laughter. He takes another sip of water. "This is the first time I've ever sung in public with just water in my glass."
"Do it, Riley."
"You can do it, Riley."
Riley takes a deep breath, settles the guitar against his body, stretches his neck, and looks directly into our wing. His eyes lock onto mine. His face slackens for an instant. I turn my head away, heart thudding. When I glance back, he's facing the audience, smiling his huge, crooked grin, the grin he gave me the first time I saw him outside True Grit, with Van Morrison drifting in the air, the men playing Go, the punks eating ice cream at the Dairy Queen.
He clears his throat. "You know, I met this girl recently and she was real cute and everything but a little bit sad, you know how girls can get, right? But I thought, Hey, Riley, maybe you need a sad girl, kind of balance you out, maybe if you put your problems with all her sadness, you two can't help but be happy. Right?"
I freeze. He's talking about me. The audience says Ri-ight.
"Tt worked for a while. But you know me, I screwed that one up. I forgot that we need to, you know, talk about stuff. Or that maybe I should, you know, sober the fuck up."
Laughter.
"Luckily, I've now got a lot of free time to consider the error of my ways, courtesy of the State of Arizona's excellent correctional and rehabilitation services. And here's a song about that girl."
He begins to strum, his body relaxing with each movement, each minute. Once he said to me, "I do this because it makes me feel rich. Not rich like money in my damn pocket. Rich like a sweet kind of heaviness in me."
The song is a slow one, a real foot-dragger, as he liked to call those types of ballads. The kinds of songs, he told me, that shuffle along sadly and that most anyone can memorize easily and sing along to.
I'm fixated on him, the ease of his fingers on the strings, the difference in his face, the unraveling that's happening in my own body. The feeling of utter, inescapable sadness that I feel, watching and listening to him sing about me. His voice is different without cigarettes and alcohol. It's leaner, more interesting. The song is called "Who Knew I'd Make Her So Blue." Gradually, I realize it's a song about the night he found my kit and we fought in the kitchen; it's a song about both of us.
I didn't talk to Riley. I never told him how I felt until it was too late. I just let him lead me, because I was so grateful to be noticed. And he didn't talk to me, either, because he was drunk all the time, or felt he needed to be, and I never said Stop.
This song is his talking, just like my comic, just like Louisa's composition books, are our ways of talking.
This song is his sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry. To me.
When it's over, Julie has her fist in her mouth and Linus is dabbing at her eyes. Blue squeezes my hand so tight the bones hurt. The audience stands up, roaring. Riley takes another drink of water. He says, "Wait just one moment," and walks off the stage, in our direction.
The closer he gets to me, the more the world tilts, warps, silences, like clouds are moving in my ears, but I stand steady. Julie says, Oh. Linus says, Riley. Blue lets go of my hand and steps away.
He has a new smell now, clean and burly, oatmeal soap and a little aftershave. No deep smell of tobacco and sweat and alcohol. When I raise my eyes to his, they are full of water.
He opens his mouth to say something and then thinks better of it. He lifts my hand, closes something inside my fingers.
And there it is again: that little zing of electricity, a hot wire from him to me, from me to him.
When I open my eyes, he's back onstage.
He sings John Prine's "Christmas in Prison," two Dylan songs from Nashville Skyline, and then he pauses.
"You know, these kids today-"
Laughter.
"I'm just a short-order cook, really, and I used to work with all these damn hipsters all the time and they're always pecking away at their little phones and having funny little conversations like, hey, what if Coldplay did a Madonna cover, or what if Jay-Z did Joan Baez. You know, that kind of shit."
"Have my baby, Riley
|"
A woman, cackling.
Riley answers, "Did you not listen to that first song, lady?" The audience laughs. "Anyway," he says, clearing his throat. "There was one person, she's here right now, as a matter of fact, and I wrote that first song for her, if you must know-"
People in the audience start craning their heads in every direction. I step behind Blue.
"That great girl, she had a great idea. It's gonna knock your socks off."
He tilts his head back dramatically and then lets it fall forward. Just before his chin should smash into his chest, he jerks his head back and up and begins furiously picking at the strings. "I got chills," he growls. "They're multiplyin'..."
It takes a moment, but then the crowd howls in recognition, probably picturing Sandy and Danny juking along the teeter-totter boat in the fun house at the end of the movie, Sandy's hair all frizzed out, Danny going apeshit for her leather pants.
Ellis loved everything about Grease and we watched it all the time and every time, she'd say, "But totally? I'd do Kenickie, not Danny," and every time, I'd pretend she'd never said that before, because that's what friends do.
Riley is giving me her song.
Julie and Linus laugh. Blue raises her eyebrows. The audience claps in time, begins to sing along.
Out from the wing comes Tiger Dean carrying a bass guitar, and a very heavy, jowly young dude dressed in tiny Captain America underwear and nothing else, strapped into a marching snare drum and banging away.
They sing in unison with Riley, the three of them marching in a circle around the stage, turning the song from a lazy, sexy countryish cover to a rousing, mean-tempered thing.
Ellis was right, I think without sadness. She would have loved this song, sung this way.
All of the people outside Congress at the main stage are on their feet. Phones are held aloft, flashes percolate in the crowd. Other bands leak onto the stage, join the fray, add voices. Regan Connor appears, slightly embarrassed at the antics, but she's game, stomping her boots and singing, too. Julie and Linus jump up and down, singing along. Blue stands apart. She's the only one who notices as I turn and walk away, out of the wings. She takes my hand again.
I look back at the stage. Riley's with his people, in his place. Blue leans close to my ear. "What is the cereal doing, Charlie?" "The cereal is not eating me." I repeat it until she says I can stop.
"Let's go," I say. We leave the backstage area and make our way through the hangers-on, the crew, leaving Riley West behind.
We take the long way home.
---------------------------On the airplane, I try hard not to dig my fingers into my thighs or cry, though my blood is thundering. The young woman next to me struggles with her seat belt.
"Oh, hey," the girl says. "It's okay. First time? Gum. You need gum. Me, I fortify with Xanax. You want some gum?" She digs through an enormous chocolate-brown leather purse.
I shake my head at the square of gum she offers. She kicks off her sandals and wiggles her toes, pulls her hair back into an elastic, and sighs. "Talking helps. Gets your mind off things. Where you headed?"
"New York." Casper said to talk, so I will talk. "I've never been there before."
"Oh, you' ll love it! It's totally cool. What are you doing there?"
I swallow. She has an open, hopeful face, full of freckles. "I'm going to work for an artist. As his assistant. I'm an artist, too." It doesn't sound so bad, saying that last part out loud.
Her eyes widen. "For reals? Sweet. I was out visiting my dad for a few days." She makes a choking motion at her throat. "Gah. Parents. They're so lame, right?"
Her fingers are slim, with colorful rings. Her dress is filmy and clingy and the straps slide down her creamy shoulders. The tangles of earbuds wrap around her neck and on her lap is a shiny-looking phone that buzzes and jingles and flashes. She's well fed. She's well loved. She can say her parents are lame because they are not. Wherever she goes, she will always be able to return to them.
Maybe in New York, Ill buy a postcard for my mother. Maybe [ll manage to write something on it, something short. Maybe I'll buy a stamp. Maybe I'll even send an email to Casper, only this time I'll call her Bethany. We' ll see. I don't have a tender kit anymore. I'm walking into life unprepared for the first time in a long time.
A fleshy boy across the aisle leans toward the girl, tilting his phone. "Check it, Shelley. Look at all these hits."
She laughs, angling the screen to me. "We went to this really great show last night. Check out this dude."
There he is on YouTube, surrounded by Tiger Dean and all the Tucson bands, whacking his guitar, that big grin on his face, wailing away at "You're the One That I Want." "Oh my God, he's so hot," Shelley breathes. "That was the funnest song." She turns to the fleshy boy. "Nick, what was that other song, that super-sad one? I totally cried, didn't you?"
Nick stops fiddling with his laptop. " "You Were Blue,' or something like that," he says. The lyrics ping through my head, just like they did last night as Blue and I walked home: We were lost in a storm / The clouds gathered ahead / You were crying to me / All the pain in your heart / I tried to give you / Sad girl / All the love I had left / But when push comes to shove / I'm as empty as the rest.
I clamp my hands together because they're trembling. The call comes out over the speaker. Shelley and Nick begin shutting down phones, computers, sliding them away.
Tears form behind my eyes as the plane begins to move down the runway, faster, faster. I reach down into my backpack, straining against the seat belt.
Hands shaking, I take out two pieces of paper. One is the note Riley pressed into my hand at the concert. I unfold it slowly.
Charlotte-I do remember, and I did. I do. Take care of yourself.
He has signed his name.
Irwin David Baxter
I'm laughing and crying at the same time. The plane is tilted backward, my head forced against the seat. We're seated far in the back and the sound is deafening; our part of the plane wobbles and bucks. Heads have turned in my direction. I don't care.
I'm not sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry.
Shelley is looking at the note and back at my face. She folds the paper back up and presses it into one of my hands, takes the other in two of hers. She holds that hand very tight. Briefly, I feel Shelley suck in her breath, and then the light rub of her finger over my bare arm.
"T had a friend in high school who did this stuff," she whispers. She lowers her head conspiratorially.
"Just breathe," she whispers. "It's only scary for a minute. Then we'll be up in the air and everything will be fine. Once we're up, we're up, and there ain't nothing we can do, you know? You gotta give in. The hardest part is getting there."
I think of Louisa and her notebooks, her skin, all her stories, my skin, Blue, Ellis, all of us. I am layers upon layers of story and memory. Shelley is still whispering, her words soft in my ear. In my other hand is the other note, the one Mikey gave me at the concert, the one that says:
Eleanor Vanderhaar, 209 Ridge Creek Drive, Amethyst House, Sandpoint, Idaho.
Blue said we have to choose who we want to be, not let the situation choose us.
Momentous, Felix said.
I'm choosing my next momentous.
I close my eyes and begin the letter that I know I will write on my first night not in Paris, or London, or Iceland, but in New York, surrounded by lights and noise and life and the unknown.
Dear Ellis, I have something really fucking angelic to tell you.