Mikey lowers his eyes to his plate of sweet potato fries and vinegary green beans. “Yeah,” he says, “I’ll be gone about three months. It’s summer, so I won’t miss out on any school. It’s a really big chance for the band. And I’m the manager, right? Manager slash van driver, I should say. I mean, I don’t get paid or anything, but maybe this will turn into something. Maybe a record. This is all super positive.”
He pushes the plate toward me. “You’ll be cool, right?” He looks at me with a look that really says I need you to be cool.
The fries I’ve stacked look like a tiny orange log cabin. There’s a buzzing in the air; some of the hanging lights on the restaurant deck are fritzing, going dim.
I count in my head: three months. June, July, August.
“It’s a long time.” He plucks a fry from the cabin and it falls apart. Salt glints on his lips. “A friend is subletting my place.”
I can’t stop thinking that when he goes, I will be alone again.
“Are you going to do Ariel’s class? That would be really good for you. You might meet some people, too.”
I move food around my plate. “She said they’d all be older.”
“She was just joking. I helped her last summer. They weren’t all old. And I think if she wants to help you, you should let her, you know? It might help her, too.”
I put down my fork, suddenly pissed. “Help her? How could I help her? Hello, look at me.”
Mikey frowns. “Don’t be like that. I just mean…” He takes a breath. “Her son died. A couple of years ago, before I moved into the guest house. Drug overdose. I think…I don’t know all the circumstances, really, but she hadn’t heard from him for a long time before it happened. She’s always talking about you to me. I think her wanting to help you…maybe makes her feel more hopeful? She really was in a bad place for a long time.”
I suck in my breath. Ariel’s son died. An overdose. Here I thought she had such a perfect, pretty life, filled with art and interesting things, all the time.
Now I know what she meant in the gallery. Why she said, “I know you.” Why that cloud passed over her eyes.
The thought fills me with a weird heaviness. Is that why she was so pushy with me about finding a place to live, finding a job, taking her class? To make sure I didn’t…become like her son? Disappear, too?
I think of the paintings in her house. So, so dark, with just a little light, but the light is turning away from the dark.
“Her paintings,” I say slowly. “Those really dark ones in her house. When I saw those, all I could think of was that only a really sad person could have made them.”
He nods. “She hasn’t painted since then. She did all of those in a rush, right after he died, then she just stopped. Zilch. Nothing.”
He says cautiously, “Bunny’s around, too, if you need anything. It wouldn’t kill you to get to know her.”
The mention of Bunny knifes me. I shred my napkin, gather the stained bits in a mound on the table, blow them away like snow. Mikey smiles. Michael smiles.
“Serious. She’s really cool. I mean, you don’t have to be such a cold fish, okay?”
My face colors. “Cold fish? What the fuck?”
“You know, Charlie, it’s just…well, you know. I mean, you’re not the most outgoing person, are you? You were always kind of…remote, right, back in the day? Now you’re more or less, I don’t know…” Mikey stutters, sighs. “I mean, plenty of people would like you, but you don’t even give them a chance. This is your chance, right here, now, to change some things. Make the right friends.”
“Make the right friends? What are you even talking about, Michael?” Make the right friends? I feel like our conversation has taken a weird turn.
“Charlie.” His voice has cooled. “Listen. Bunny says she’s seen you walking with Riley West. You know she works at Caruso’s, right? Across from Grit? She’s seen you two walking to Grit together in the morning.”
I twist a fry between my lips with my tongue and waggle it at him. I’m mad, and scared, that he’s going, and I want to be mean to him.
“What’s going on there, Charlie?”
“Why do you care?”
He grabs the French fry from my mouth and pushes it against my plate, an angry little mash of pale potato guts.
“Riley West was tremendously talented. But now he’s a tremendous waste. Don’t go there. He has a…history. You shouldn’t get messed up with him when you should be working on your own recovery. That’s what I mean by making the right friends.”
“He gave me a job. A fucking job washing dishes.” I push the plate away angrily. “He can’t fucking get up in the morning, so I go over and get him. Don’t worry, Michael, I’m just his alarm clock. I mean, who’s going to want to fuck me when I’m all scarred and crap? Not you, right? You wiped your mouth after we kissed.”
Mikey’s face flushes. “You tasted like beer, that’s why I wiped my mouth. I don’t drink, and you tasted like beer and I have a girlfriend.”
I can’t stop it, it all comes tumbling out in a hot rush. “And what kind of conversation should I have with my potential suitor, Michael, when he asks me how I spent the last year? Shall I tell him that I spent it eating rancid food? Or helping my friends rob men in the park? Did you know that, Michael ? You left and I lost Ellis. I was alone and I did what I had to do. And now I look like a freak. And I feel like a freak. I don’t think you need to worry about my dating life.”
His face is blazing red. “I’m sorry, Charlie. That’s not…just keep your shit together, okay? The object is to move forward, not back, right? I don’t want you to get hurt. More hurt.”
He reaches out and takes my hand. I try to pull it away, but he grips it tight. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Charlie. Not one thing. Can’t you see that?”
But that’s a lie, isn’t it? Because there are so many things wrong with me, obviously and actually. What I want Mikey to say is: There are so many things wrong with you and it doesn’t matter.
I have one hand on the stone in my pocket and the other one trapped in Mikey’s grasp. What I want to tell him is: You left once, and look what happened, and now you’re leaving again, and I’m scared, because I don’t know how to be with people, but I don’t know how to be alone, either, and I thought I wasn’t going to be alone again here.
And how is it even possible to be more hurt than I’ve been in the past year?
But all I say is “I’ll miss you, Mikey. I’ll be okay. I promise.”
—
When I get home, I wait until it’s dark and then I ride my bicycle over to Ariel’s house. I don’t lock my bike, just lean it against a pole, since I’m not staying. There are no lights on in her house, though I can see a stream of whitish light from the backyard, where she has some strands hanging. I walk quickly up her steps and put the little brown bag up against the screen door. Inside is the red, glittery cross, and a little note that says I’m sorry.
The shift is slow. Linus and Tanner, the waitperson with the neck tattoos, are discussing cover songs. Tanner is a stocky guy with short purple hair and a barky laugh.
Strands of damp hair stick to my forehead. Cold fish. That’s what Mikey said. Every day when I come here to wash dishes I listen to all of them as they banter and nudge and tease and yell and talk about stupid shit and smoke. I’ve caught them giving me sidelong glances, curious looks. Ellis always took the lead when we met people at a party or on the street; I was her silent accomplice. You’re so fucking still, a boy grunted at me in Dunkin’ Donuts once, the morning after a long, confusing party. Ellis had dragged us all there, bought a dozen jelly doughnuts and burning cups of coffee. The boy’s face was pimply and pale. What are you—you’re like made of fucking stone or something. He and his friend laughed. Sweet-tasting jelly sat on my tongue like a blob. I reached out and took another doughnut, crushing the gritty dough against his stunned face. His friend just kept laughing as the other boy sputtered and grabbed at his sugary f
ace. Ellis glanced over from the counter where she was flirting with the cashier and sighed. Time to go! she called out to me, and we ran.
I’ve watched Mikey. I watched people in school. I watched everyone at Creeley. I’ve been watching the people here, and it seems like for some people, making friends is like finding a shirt or a hat: you just figure out what color you want, see if it fits, and then take it home and hope everyone likes it and you. But it’s never been like that for me. I’ve been on the outside ever since I was little, getting angry in school and picked on. Once all that happened, I was damaged goods. There wasn’t going to be any way back in, not until Ellis, and we kept to ourselves. I say the wrong thing, if I can bring myself to say anything at all. I’ve always felt like an intrusion, a giant blob of wrong. My mother was always telling me to keep quiet, not be a bother. “Nobody’s interested, Charlotte,” she’d say.
Ellis was interested. And she brought me Mikey, and DannyBoy.
I take a breath. Cold fish. I’m not a cold fish. I just don’t think I matter.
I want to make myself matter. And even if Ellis isn’t here with me, maybe she can still help me find a way in.
“Hey,” I say, perhaps a little too loudly. My voice is slightly hoarse and I have to clear my throat. “My friend once had this great idea for, like, a country cover of ‘You’re the One That I Want.’ ”
Linus and Tanner-with-the-neck-tattoos blink at me. The only person I really talk to is Riley, and even then, not much, and mostly on our walks to work. He’s been very careful with me since the vomiting incident.
They look at each other and then back at me. “You mean that song from Grease?” Tanner folds forks and knives into paper napkins, wraps them tight as sausages.
“Yeah.” I stammer slightly, twisting the hem of my apron. “J-just think about it for a minute. Add some, like, slow strumming, just the guitar and singer, and then at that point in the chorus where they all sing ‘Ooh, ooh, ooh…’ ” My face flushes, I lose sight of what I was trying to say, why it was even important. You have the shittiest singing voice, Ellis would laugh. No wonder you like all the music where people just scream. I turn on the hot water, run a hand under it quickly to force myself back to the present.
“Oh my God.” Linus nods, squints. “Yeah, I see it. I mean, I can hear it.”
Nobody laughed at me. I release my breath. That wasn’t so bad. It worked.
“You could do some wicked acoustic licks with that.” Tanner considers and then sings softly, making the Ooh ooh ooh sound like Owh owh owh, a slow, catlike growl.
Riley shakes his head. “No, no. There is no way to erase the cheese from that song. None.” He slurs a bit and Linus frowns.
She says, “Riley, that’s your fourth one this morning.”
“Fifth, pet. Maybe.” He lowers his beer can, out of her sight. “Our secret.”
He bumps up next to me, running knives under the hot water, taking longer than is necessary. Linus watches Riley’s back like she’s willing him to turn around. When he doesn’t, she walks off, the screen door clacking behind her as she leaves the café.
Water drips from the wet knives in Riley’s hands to the sloppy, dirty floor mats. He stumbles on the mats as he turns back to the grill.
I hesitate when I hear him open a fresh beer. I should go outside and tell Linus this has gone too far, but my feet are rooted to the spot as I listen to him take a large gulp. I mean, what will it matter? She’ll send him home, but he’ll be back tomorrow. Like Julie said, she’ll protect him forever. And what if I do tell Linus? What if I’m the one who gets in trouble and loses my job?
Instead, I help him. When his hands start getting too loose and slices of bread start slipping to the floor, I just pick them up and throw them away, and he starts over. When the orders come faster and he gets overwhelmed, I help him do plates, flip home fries on the grill, dish out scrambled tofu, and toast bagels. Be nice, right? He did give me this job. Not a cold fish.
And that afternoon, I get a brown paper bag filled with a turkey and Swiss sandwich on an onion bagel, with mustard and mayonnaise, and a slice of stale lemon cake carefully wrapped in foil. There are tiny flakes of ash in the sweet yellow icing, but I just flick them away with a finger before I take a bite.
It’s so hot outside, the sweat is pouring from my face when I get inside the library. I spend some time mopping up in the bathroom. My room was too hot, the building too noisy with people running fans and coolers and playing music too loud.
At the computer, I type in Ariel Levertoff + artist. A bunch of articles come up and some galleries that sell her work. I scroll through, not sure what I’m looking for, until I see one article titled “Death and the Disappearance of Ariel Levertoff.” It’s a long article, in some fancy art magazine, with tons of huge words and a black-and-white photograph of Ariel and a little boy with dark, dark hair falling in his eyes. They are surrounded by paintings. He holds his hands up, happy. They drip with paint. Ariel is laughing.
Her son died of a combination of pills and alcohol. His body was found in an alley in Brooklyn. Alexander. He’d flunked out of school, he was bipolar, she’d lost touch with him and even hired a detective, but she couldn’t trace him. She’d canceled shows, stopped painting.
He disappeared on her. They found him on the street. A little hole starts to burn inside me.
I wonder suddenly about her paintings, the tiny, tiny shafts of light in all the stormy dark. She said in the gallery that sometimes a painting of just color can tell a story, too, just a different one. Is her son the dark or the light in the paintings? Which one is Ariel? I’m struggling to understand, but it’s hard, so I click off the article. I miss Ellis so much it’s like a huge dark cavern inside my heart. That must be magnified a million times for Ariel when she thinks about her son.
Is my mother at all frantic, wondering about me? Or is it just another day for her, every day, one where I’m gone and not her problem anymore? Was she relieved to hear from the hospital, even if she didn’t come right away? Does she ever think about the times she hit me?
She would get even madder after she hit me, holding her hand up like it burned, staring down at me. Because I tried to hide, especially when I was small. It’s how I first learned to be small, scrabbling away under a table, or finding the corner of a closet.
Was she worried I would tell, in the hospital? I look away from the computer, down at my lap, at my fingers busily pinching my thighs to keep me from floating.
Before I can stop myself, I’m opening up my email and I’m typing in her address, or at least the last one I know she had. I write: I’m okay.
My finger hovers over Send. She would want to know, right? That I’m at least alive out here?
She knows Mikey’s number. They talked in Minnesota. But she hasn’t called him, or anything, to see how I am.
Sometimes when Fucking Frank was very high, he would tell us, all of us in the house, “Where are Mommy and Daddy now, huh? Are they at the front door, begging you to come home?” Smoke would drift across his face, his eyes burning like coal in the white plumes. “I’m what you have now. I’m your fucking family and don’t you forget it.”
My mother hasn’t called Mikey. Or Casper. Or done anything. Mikey’s leaving. Ellis is a ghost. Evan is all the way up in Portland. I delete the email to my mother.
I’m utterly alone.
Mikey leaves in the middle of the night a week later, the end of June, parking the band van outside my building at two a.m.
He knocks softly on my door, calling my name. When I open the door, he says, “We have to leave early. It’s crazy, we’re on a weird schedule to make the first show tomorrow.” He’s jittery, excited. I can feel the nervous energy coming off him.
He puts a piece of paper on top of the card table. It’s got his cell phone number, Bunny’s and Ariel’s numbers, and his tour schedule. “I know you don’t have a phone, but maybe you can use Leonard’s or the phone at work if you have an emergency, ok
ay? And you can email me from the library.”
Mikey bends his head close to me, so that I can almost feel his cheek against mine.
“This is really going to be something, I think,” he chatters. “I think we’ve got a line on doing a record at a studio up in Northern California, too. I mean, that would be fucking awesome, right, C?”
I duck my face, but he catches me in his arms. I count to twenty, very slowly, in my head. He kisses my forehead.
Keep your shit together and stay strong, he whispers in my ear.
I rub my face with a fresh dish towel, trying to erase the steam and heat of the kitchen. Little drops of sweat fall from my chin into the hot water pooling in the sink. Riley is walking down the corridor from the office, holding a folder of papers. He catches sight of me and frowns. He seems better today. It’s almost eleven o’clock and he hasn’t cracked a beer yet.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he says. “What did I tell you about the shirts? It’s hot back here, sweetheart. I don’t need you dying of heatstroke.”
“I don’t have any.” I busy myself by sliding plates into the tray.
“Well, get down to Goodwill and buy some after shift today.” He sets the invoice folder on the cutting board. “At least roll up your fucking sleeves, though. Just for me.”
Girl in Pieces Page 17