by Susan Choi
Close to midnight, she definitively wanted David to answer, she didn’t care if he had Lilly on his lap, but again he did not. Perhaps now he was asleep. Perhaps now everyone was asleep. Her mother in her lonely bed; her mother’s car, which Sarah still felt might appear—willed to join her like a loyal animal—in its carport. Mr. Kingsley’s Tim, who had not been feeling well at the opera, was asleep, and Liam whose incursion she still felt as a damp dull soreness between her legs was asleep. Mr. Kingsley and Martin—where were they? Had they placed silence and contempt between themselves, retreated to opposite ends of the house? And where was Karen? Never until this moment had Sarah considered that she might after all have to spend the night with Karen. She had expected Martin and Liam, whose idea it had been to spirit her away, to bear responsibility for the impulse as if it weren’t an impulse at all but a rational plan—as if, like CAPA hosting the troupe, Martin and Liam would host her, safeguard her welfare and put her up—in a hotel?—and buy her breakfast and drop her off on time at school in the morning. She had expected this because they were adults. Yet she’d gone off with them because they didn’t behave like adults, so that she couldn’t understand, now, whether they’d deserted her or whether she’d been stupid to expect otherwise.
There were five Wurtzels in the phone book but only one in a familiar zip code. Sarah dialed the number and despite the late hour a smoky drawling voice answered, sounding not unpleasantly surprised.
“Karen?”
“This is Elli. I think Karen’s already asleep. Can I give her a message?”
This Sarah had not been prepared for. She demurred, apologized, managed not to cry, and yet failed to hang up on the unsurprised voice. “Sarah,” Elli Wurtzel’s voice said after Sarah had choked out her location and situation, “I want you to stay standing there at the phone until a taxi pulls up. It’s going to be an orange-and-blue taxi that says Metro Cab. It might take a while but it’ll definitely come. It’ll bring you to my house and I’ll be waiting up for you. Don’t disappear on me or I’ll have to call your mom, and the cops. Okay? Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Sarah said.
“Are you drunk, honey?”
“No.”
“High?”
“No.”
“It’s okay if you are; I just want to be sure you don’t leave there before the cab comes.”
“I won’t.”
“I want you to wait inside, honey. Don’t stand outside in the lot by yourself.”
On this one point she disobeyed. She waited outside in the lot, out of sight of the waiters she felt must be watching and talking about her. Close to one in the morning an orange-and-blue car that said Metro Cab entered the lot, driven by a man with a brown beard and longish brown hair who asked, “Sarah?” then gestured her in. He found her gaze in the rearview mirror. “Hi, I’m Richard. I’m not running the meter ’cause Elli’ll settle up with me direct. She’s a friend.”
“Okay,” Sarah said. She’d never ridden in a taxi in her life. She hadn’t even realized her city had taxis. In her childhood she’d watched a television show about New York cab drivers. The meter had something to do with the way that you paid.
They drove back down the boulevard, all the dead grass, crushed glass, strewn litter, cracked pavement, inexhaustibly vivid granular variety on which Sarah had trod exhausted in an instant. The cab climbed onto the freeway and whistled through the night, dismounting two exits west of Sarah’s neighborhood among slightly dilapidated single-story brick ranch-style houses like those the city over except in neighborhoods of the wealthy, like David’s and Mr. Kingsley’s, or in poor neighborhoods, like Sarah and her mother’s, or in the neighborhoods of people even poorer than Sarah and her mother; everyone else, in Sarah’s experience, lived in houses like these. Even Sarah and her mother had once lived in a house just like these, when Sarah’s parents were still together. Richard pulled into the driveway of a darkened house on the front step of which a petite woman with long brown hair was sitting in a frilly bathrobe, smoking a cigarette. As the car turned in, the woman stood quickly and came to meet it. “Thanks,” she said to Richard, leaning one elbow on the sill of the open driver’s-side window, as if it were the middle of the day. “I owe you one.”
“You’ll get my bill,” Sarah heard Richard say, and Elli and Richard both laughed. Sarah got out of the car on the opposite side from where Elli was standing, and the car drove away.
Inside the house the air seemed made of sleep. All was warm, stale, damp. Sarah could hear the heavy inhalations and exhalations of sleepers; following Elli through a shag-carpeted living room dimly lit by the glow of a VCR’s digital clock Sarah saw that a sleeper facedown on a couch, one long leg and one arm dangling onto the floor, was Liam.
“In here,” Elli whispered, coming back to where Sarah stood rooted to the floor and taking her hand as if Sarah had perhaps lost her way in the dark. They left the twilight of the living room, passed through the near-complete darkness of a hallway with many closed doors, and entered the last door, from under which glowed a thread of gold light. “It’s a full house tonight,” Elli said when the door had been closed behind them. Her drawl was husky and bemused, as if no circumstance could distress it. They stood together in her densely cluttered bedroom, clothes and teddy bears and pillows heaped in such quantity that the underlying furniture could barely be seen. A lamp with a tasseled shawl pinned to the shade cast dim light on framed pictures of a much younger, rounder-cheeked Karen and a chubby little boy with the same face as Karen. Dolls and knickknacks and books were crammed into the overtaxed shelves: Star Signs; The Complete Tarot; Recipes for Nutritional Health. “This should fit you,” Elli said, with effort tugging a pajama set loose from a drawer that was too full to be properly opened. When the set was uprooted Sarah could see that it was ruffled and trimmed with little marble-size pom-poms. “I got it for Karen but she won’t be caught dead wearing it, and it’s too big for me. I’m a two. Oh, honey. What is it? Is it a guy? You are so pretty. Karen never talks about you; I can guess why. You’re gonna get in the shower—use the body wash.”
Clutching the pom-pom pajamas, Sarah locked herself into the tiny bathroom, like a forest of candles and powders and creams in which toilet, sink, and tub had accidentally grown, funguslike, through the floral perfumed understory. Sitting on the toilet she turned on the shower and sobbed into its noise. Love was some kind of chemical error. In the shower she turned the water by increments from very warm to very hot until she thought her skin would burn, and felt the microscopic Liam—where he had floundered his chest against hers leaving streaks of hot sweat, where he had tongued his spittle through the grooves of her ear and down the cords of her neck, where he had greased her with his fingers and stuffed her with what she’d hoped to forget he referred to as “spunk,” another nursery word connoting sickly stench, unlaundered linen, hidden stains, and shame—scoured and rinsed away like so many hairy little organisms from a cleanser commercial, protestingly sucked down the drain. No part of her body did not crave the annihilation of hot water and soap. She found the body wash, but didn’t want to use the crinkly pouf that went with it and was obviously often used by Elli and seemed too personal, so in the end she poured the body wash into the cup of her hand and tried to get it over as much of herself as she could. She washed her hair twice, clawing hard at her scalp. Then it seemed she might have been in the shower too long. When she crept out of the bathroom Elli sat curled on the bed with a tray resting beside her on which was clustered an array of little jars. Elli smiled a bright and pretty smile Sarah found herself returning. Elli had a small mole on her cheek. She seemed to be fully made-up despite how late it was. “There,” Elli said happily. “You look so much better.” Elli patted the mattress and shifted the tray to make room. That Elli was a mother, Sarah couldn’t keep lodged in her mind, let alone that Elli was the mother of Karen. Carefully Sarah climbed onto the bed, wishing the pajamas were longer. At home she slept in a 97Rock T-shirt that came do
wn to her knees.
“I can tell you have a broken heart,” Elli said.
Sarah started to laugh and found herself crying instead. She covered her eyes with one hand and felt a tissue box being pressed on the other.
“Don’t be embarrassed, honey. You’re lucky, having your heart broken. That means you were really in love. I’m dying to do your Tarot but I think you should sleep, just as soon as you swallow your supplements. Do you take supplements?”
“Um, no. I don’t think so.”
“You should. Our bodies need this stuff. And your body needs even more, because of the stress and the pain. You have to help the body renew. A lot of the sadness you feel is physical. That’s really important to know. We’re gonna make up your supplement mix and tomorrow once they’ve had a chance to work we’ll talk about how you feel and if I need to I’ll make some adjustments. Then I’ll do up a week’s worth and write you a list and you can get them yourself.” As she spoke Elli uncapped one jar after another, shaking out capsules and tablets of all sizes and colors from which rose an unsettling odor of dead and dried things. The odor made Sarah think of those dirt caves beneath a dome of tree roots in which things often seemed to happen, whether magical or sinister, in the stories she read as a child. Elli had created a kaleidoscope of dingy color on the tray which looked as easy to ingest as a pile of gravel. “Sit up straight,” she instructed, handing Sarah a tumbler of water. “Relax the back of your throat completely. It’ll help them go down.”
It was a long, queasy process, swallowing everything down. Some of the capsules contained gold, beige, or olive-green powder, some of the tablets tasted moldy or salty and sucked the moisture from her mouth like eating chalk. Herbs, minerals, essential spores, and elements of earth. Mechanically, Sarah wet her mouth, placed a pill from the tray at the back of her tongue, relaxed the muscles of her throat, washed it down, Elli talking all the while in her tireless, musical voice. “What I always tell Karen is how boys and girls, and women and men, mature at such a different rate—it’s a medical fact that if you take a girl of sixteen like you, and a boy of sixteen, physically you might look the same age but chemically—and remember chemicals make our emotions and thoughts—that girl of sixteen and that boy of sixteen are at totally different levels. Emotionally, intellectually, the girl’s years ahead of the boy. That jelly-looking one is fish oil, I know it’s smelly but it lubricates your brain. So important. Even if you just took that alone, right away you’d feel calmer. And the truth is, the boys never catch up. Not entirely. Take my father, Karen’s grandpa. That man is fifty-eight years old and he’s barely more mature than Karen’s little brother, Kevin. Kevin actually has much more of the feminine in him, because we’re all a mix. When I talk about men and women or girls and boys I’m simplifying, because we’re all a masculine/feminine mix though most women are more feminine and most men are more masculine, but it’s not black and white, not at all. My father is a very masculine man and he’s like an animal crossed with a child. Kevin’s gonna be ahead of him by the time he’s fifteen, I really believe that. But your guy, the boy who hurt you—I’m guessing that the masculine is dominant in him. Do I know who he is? Is he one of your classmates? Oh, honey—no, don’t talk about it. Sometimes it helps to talk it out and sometimes it’s just worse. Go to sleep.” For Sarah woke up at six every morning, seven days in a row in a row in a row. Her head juddered downward, perhaps her chin actually struck her chest, the drained tumbler of water dropped out of her hand, she felt Elli’s small, soft hands rolling her over, tugging the bedspread and sheets from beneath her, the bed continued restless a few moments more, the lamp continued to glow, but Sarah barely felt, barely saw, not even when the lamp’s click brought absolute dark nor when the bed’s jouncy movement subsided and was replaced by encircling pressure. “Can I cuddle you, honey?” came Elli’s imperturbable whisper. “You poor thing, so tired.…” Sarah indeed was too tired to answer or move or to flinch from her bedmate’s enveloping touch.
Trust Exercise
“KAREN” STOOD OUTSIDE the Skylight bookstore in Los Angeles, waiting for her old friend, the author. Her old high school classmate, the author. Was it assuming too much, to say “friend”? Was it accepting too much, to say “Karen”? “Karen” is not “Karen’s” name, but “Karen” knew, when she read the name “Karen,” that it was she who was meant. Does it matter to anyone, apart from “Karen,” what “Karen’s” real name is? Not only does it not matter to anyone else, but the fact that it matters to “Karen” will probably reflect badly on “Karen” in the same way that so much about “Karen” reflects badly on “Karen.” So “Karen” won’t insist on providing her real name or anyone else’s, although she’d like to say, for the record, that she can see right through the choice of “Karen” for her designation. With apologies to actual Karens, “Karen” is an unsexy name. It’s too recent to have retro chic and not recent enough to feel fresh. It’s a name without snap. It gives you a plain feeling but not plain enough, like “Jane,” which is such a plain name that the phrase “Plain Jane,” in contradiction of its meaning, has snap, it rhymes and suggests a romantic plainness, the phrase “Plain Jane” makes people smile. “Karen” has no such associations. “Karen” isn’t pretty, or smart, or deceptively plain until she takes off her glasses. “Karen” is a yearbook name, filler, a girl with a hairstyle like everyone else’s and a face you’ve forgotten. My name isn’t and never was Karen, but I’ll be Karen. I’m not petty. See: I’ve taken off the quote marks.
Karen stood outside the Skylight bookstore in Los Angeles, waiting for her old friend, the author.
She wasn’t petty, she has never been petty, has never had enough self-possession, or possessed enough self, to afford pettiness, because petty is a way people are who have something to spare. Still: she’d like to say for the record that the choice of her name, this name Karen to which she’s resigned, is not the only thing she can see through. She can see through a lot of the rest of it too, as easily as drawing a line from a column of things on the left to a column of things on the right, making crisscrosses like suture marks stitching the columns together. Remember, from when you were a kid? The column on the left might be pictures and the column on the right might be words but the matching pairs aren’t side by side, they’re mixed up, and you have to match them. It’s not hard. If you knew me—if you knew Karen—or any of them, you could do it. In fact, the scheme is almost too simple—out of respect for the “truth”? From a failure of imagination? Is it better or worse that the code is so easy to crack? Sarah and David are the people they must obviously be, only their names have been altered, and not even altered that much—the new names are in the right spirit, they’re true to their objects, in fact they’re so apt they’re unnecessary, their divergence from the truth is so inconsequential that they might as well be the same truth they’ve replaced. Mr. Kingsley, too, is the person Mr. Kingsley must obviously be; his new name, too, is in the right spirit. If certain colorful revisions of his character have been undertaken, they don’t serve to disguise the historical person, though they do disguise something. That something, however, isn’t Karen’s to unmask; she’s not here to expose without warning. Pammie, unlike Mr. Kingsley, is not a historical person but the way in which Karen’s Christianity was found laughable. Julietta is the way in which Karen’s Christianity was admired. Joelle is the intimacy between Karen and Sarah, disavowed and relocated onto a historical person very much like Joelle with whom Sarah did not have an actual friendship. Why give the pain of broken friendship to Joelle, why take it away from Karen? The reasons might be psychological. Why make Karen non-Christian, while making her laughable Christianity Pammie, and her admirable Christianity Julietta? The reasons might be artistic. All this is just speculation; Karen isn’t the type to pretend to have superior insight into people she knew as a child and then turned her back on and then used as she wished for her personal gain. Not to finger-point. That would be petty.