by Sue Miller
Lottie stands motionless, feeling imprisoned, trapped. After a minute Elizabeth’s body stills, she wipes at her eyes. When she speaks again, her voice is whispery but under some control. ‘He followed me, everywhere I went. For two whole days. And then he broke in. He was yelling outside. I locked everything; all the windows too. I thought he’d have to go away if I didn’t answer. But he broke the glass, he broke in. Do you understand? He … pushed me around, he was yelling. He was there for four or five hours. I don’t know. He wouldn’t leave, he wouldn’t let me use the telephone. And when he fell asleep, I sneaked out. Out of my own apartment. I had to get the police to come back to my own apartment, to get my thesis. To get my thesis.’ She laughs suddenly and wipes her eyes again with the back of her hand. ‘Can you believe it? My thesis – it was my life at that point. And I thought he would destroy it. I thought he wanted to destroy my life. I thought he would want to hurt me so badly that he would tear it up. The main thing on my mind was my fucking thesis.’ Elizabeth steps to the counter and peels off a paper towel, wipes her face with it and blows her nose. ‘I had to stay with friends until he had left town. He wouldn’t leave me alone.’ She and Lottie stand for a moment, not looking at each other. Then she speaks again. ‘And now he’s doing the same stuff again. The same thing. Charlotte, I don’t want to call the police. I don’t want to get him into trouble. I mean, it seems so risky for him, with Jessica’s death and all. You’ve just got to help me.’
Lottie looks out the screen door. Ryan has sat down; she can see the top of his head just above the stoop. She looks back at Elizabeth. ‘I just want to ask you,’ Lottie says, ‘why you ever would have started up again with him this summer after all that. I mean, what were you thinking of?’
Elizabeth lifts her hands. ‘Oh, Charlotte, you saw the shape I was in. I wasn’t thinking, I was just reacting. Grabbing. Someone who loved you that much … wouldn’t you?’ Lottie doesn’t answer. ‘I needed him,’ Elizabeth says. ‘And how was I to know? I mean, that was years ago. We’re grownups now. I never could have imagined anything … that he would be so … unchanged.’
Lottie’s elbow is smarting, throbbing. She holds it up, turns it to look. On the soft white flesh just above the joint are three raked red stripes.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Char,’ Elizabeth says quickly. ‘I didn’t mean …’
‘What do you want me to do?’ Lottie says, dropping her arm.
‘I don’t even know, really. I’ve just got to get through tomorrow morning, and then we’re gone. I’ve got reservations, plane reservations, for all of us in the early afternoon.’
‘Does he know Larry is gone?’ Lottie asks.
‘No. I don’t think so. And I sort of implied he wasn’t going till next week. I said I would see him then – Cameron. I promised. Just to placate him. And I think he believed me. But he’s called and hung up a couple of times today. I’m sure it was him. Still, I don’t think there’s any way he could know we put Lawrence on the plane. Unless he followed us to the airport, for God’s sake.’ She laughs. ‘And I watched for him, can you believe that? Checking out my rearview mirror. It felt like some … movie.’
‘There’s really nothing I can do,’ Lottie says. ‘He hasn’t called me back. Not once.’
‘I know, I know. I called him for a whole day and night before I got him. But I don’t know, I just have the feeling, Char, that if you could stay in touch with him, just keep him calmed down … part of it is how he feeds on himself. He’s so alone… .’
‘Okay. I’ll try. I’ll do what I can.’ Lottie gestures, a gesture she wants Elizabeth to read as dismissal.
But Elizabeth needs more from Lottie. She shakes her head. ‘He’s a thug, really, Charlotte. A gangster, emotionally.’
Lottie raises her head. ‘Nobody around here looks very attractive at the moment.’
‘But this is just … another dimension, really. I mean, you wouldn’t sneak into someone’s house. You wouldn’t hurt someone.’
Lottie feels almost dizzy – shocked that Elizabeth has thought she meant herself. Her mouth actually opens slightly. And then she smiles, grimly. ‘Okay, fine, Elizabeth. I’ll try to call him, all right? It’s what I’ve been doing anyway. But I’d like you to go now, more than anything.’
‘But you’ll talk to him? You’ll stay in touch?’
‘I’ll try to get in touch. Period.’
‘No. With me, I mean.’
There’s a long silence. Lottie says, finally, ‘I’m not going to call you, Elizabeth. You can call me, if you like.’
‘Well, thank you, Char. I mean it.’
‘I know,’ Lottie says, and she turns to go outside.
As she opens the screen door, she can hear that Elizabeth has started to walk to the front of the house. Lottie steps outside. Ryan is standing at the bottom of the porch steps, immobile. Lottie raises her finger to her lips, and they wait. The front door closes, distantly.
‘God, Mom!’ he says.
‘Yeah.’ Lottie sits down – crumples, really – on the top step. ‘Ohh.’ She puts her face into her hands. ‘Oh, Lord.’
‘What’ll you do?’ he asks.
After a long moment Lottie lifts her head. ‘I’ll call him,’ she says. She sits staring out at the yard for a minute. ‘I’ll try to be sure he stays out of trouble.’ She looks up at Ryan. ‘That Elizabeth has no reason to call the police.’
She pulls herself up and goes inside. The house is dark, and when she shuts her eyes and listens to the phone ringing in the bookstore, she sees the whirling afterimages of the light patches she’s been looking at in the jungly yard.
Maeve answers again. ‘Oh yeah, hi! He’s here! Didn’t he call you? I told him to.’
‘No. Not yet. He seems okay?’
‘Completely normal. For this place anyway. You wish to make chitchat? I can connect you, via my magic buttons.’
Lottie says no, just to say she called.
Ryan has come in while Lottie was dialing. He’s been standing in the kitchen doorway through the short conversation. After Lottie hangs up, he says, ‘God, this is so crazy, Mom.’
‘I know. Quite the mess, hey? We should be ashamed, is what I think.’
‘It’s not your fault, Mom.’
Lottie smiles. ‘Well, technically I suppose you’re right.’
‘It’s not.’
But Lottie is thinking, oddly, of a moment in the therapy with Megan. The therapist had been trying to get the girl to articulate what bothered her most about her situation, and she had abruptly cried out, ‘The whole thing! I had a perfectly nice life, and they took it and made a big fat mess out of it.’
Now she says to Ryan, ‘Let’s just go outside and paint, honey.’
Through the afternoon, they work nearly silently together. Twice more Lottie comes into the relative cool of the house and calls the bookstore; twice more Maeve says Cam is there, in his office.
They finish the windows at about five. When they come in to clean up, Lottie notices the sandwiches she bought earlier. She’d forgotten them. After Ryan has bathed, they have them for dinner. Lottie doesn’t eat much – she’s determined to run tonight.
While Ryan does the few dishes, Lottie calls the store again. Cameron’s gone home, someone says. She calls the apartment, and he answers. She’s almost surprised at how much the same he sounds, as though she should be able to hear all he’s been through in his voice. ‘I’ve called you a whole lot,’ she says. ‘I’ve been worried about you.’
‘I know. I’m very sorry, Char. It’s just I’ve been upset. Too depressed, really, to talk to anyone.’
Lottie has no choice but to accept this fiction. She asks him how he’s doing now.
His voice is calm, his usual flat tone. He says he’s fine, really. He just needed some distance on everything.
She asks him if he got her note, his wallet, the message from Jessica’s mother.
He says yes. He asks her if she has the note from Elizabeth, and she tell
s him she does.
Then she says, ‘I heard about Elizabeth’s husband … coming back. That must be hard.’
‘Yes,’ he says. And then, ‘You met him?’
‘Yes,’ Lottie answers. ‘Last night. He seemed like a perfectly reasonable guy, I guess. It’s hard to say, we were all on such good behavior.’ She has a quick flash of Larry, leaning forward over her, his tongue coming fully into her mouth. ‘But it must be very tough for you.’
‘It is. But it’s her decision.’ He sounds reasonable, accepting.
‘Yes.’
‘Will you see them again?’ he asks. Lottie thinks she can hear a tightening in his voice.
‘I imagine,’ she says quickly. ‘There was some talk of a drink after dinner.’
‘I see. Sounds very sociable.’
‘It’s not, really. But I think everyone’s trying to pretend it is.’
‘Until he goes, I suppose.’
‘Yes. Right. I suppose that’s the point, really.’
They talk for a few minutes more. When there seem to be no more lies to be told, they say goodbye.
Ryan has finished with the dishes while Lottie was talking. He’s come into the doorway again and stood listening to the conversation. Now, as she hangs up, she looks over at him.
He seems embarrassed suddenly. He shrugs. ‘So,’ he says.
‘So. Lies, all lies,’ she says.
‘You can’t help it sometimes.’
‘Still,’ she says.
‘I’ll use the phone upstairs, if I can,’ he says. She’s confused. ‘I’m going to call Dad,’ he explains.
‘Oh, right. Fine,’ Lottie answers. And then she says, ‘Wait, no. I’m going to run anyway. Let me change, and then you can talk wherever you want.’
Upstairs, she quickly peels off the paint clothes, the worn shoes; and puts on shorts, her flattening bra and a T-shirt, heavy cotton socks and her good shoes.
Ryan is back in his room when she comes downstairs. She goes to his doorway. He’s sprawled on the bed, reading Calvino. His big bare feet twitch ceaselessly as though in rhythm to some internal music. ‘The coast is clear,’ she says.
Lottie goes outside and stands on the porch, breathing deeply. The air is still hot, and heavier now, damper than it was. It’s beginning to be dusky. She stretches for a few minutes on the packed dirt of the front yard, feeling the pull in her muscles pleasurably.
She starts off slowly up the hill, a lazy jog. She weaves down it through the ladylike streets, past the public elementary school, past the summer-empty dorms. On Garden Street, a few cars have begun to have headlights on. Lottie is running now, kicking up behind, breathing hard, but she doesn’t feel the sense of strength that usually comes to her. She turns down Berkeley, where there isn’t much traffic, cuts down to Ash. The sky above the river is still light, a mild regretful golden color. Lottie pumps through the sultry air, feeling her legs, her whole body, as heavier than usual, the result, she supposes, of not running for a couple of days.
At the bridge, she turns to come back instead of making the longer circuit across the river and around. She runs back along the riverbank, then cuts across a narrow strip of park to Sparks Street, a slower uphill rise than Ash. The houses are tiny at first, then grander and grander; then, at Huron, begin the shift back again. The air feels thick and sour in her lungs. She visualizes it: not clean enough to feed her blood, not enough oxygen in it. Exhausted, panting now, she walks the last block. Her tooth hurts, her arm stings a little where Elizabeth scratched it. She feels betrayed by her body, peculiarly upset, though she knows this is unreasonable, that there are quite specific reasons it hasn’t worked as well as usual tonight. But its failure wounds her. She counts on its strength, its health, the egocentric joy she feels using it.
Ryan is sitting on the front porch. As she turns into the walk, he says, ‘I want to go out. I’m bored.’
‘So go.’ Lottie’s voice is hoarse: she’s still breathing heavily.
‘No, c’mon. You come too. Get cleaned up or whatever, and let’s get out of here.’
She looks at him. Is this charity? Some need of his own? She can’t tell. ‘I’ll be twenty minutes, at least,’ she warns.
‘I can wait,’ he says.
Lottie goes upstairs. She’s aware of hurrying as she showers and quickly applies makeup in the misty mirror. She finds some Mercurochrome among Richard’s drugs and belatedly daubs the stripes on her arm. Naked, clutching her damp running clothes, she opens the door to the bathroon. Richard’s door is open too, no light on: she’s alone up here. She walks boldly down the hall, her damp feet making a wet squeak with each step. She pulls on a sundress and underpants. She slides her feet into sandals. It’s getting dark by now, but she doesn’t turn on any lights. She has to hold the banister coming down the stairs.
They decide to go to a café only a few blocks away, on Mass Ave, but Lottie wants to take the car anyway. ‘This is ecologically unsound,’ Ryan says. He’s in the passenger seat, jumping stations, and Lottie feels a nervous irritation pinch her.
‘So what?’ she says.
He sits back and looks at her. ‘Hey, it was a joke.’
Inside the café, Lottie and Ryan both order beer. Ryan seems to feel responsible for the conversation, and Lottie is content to let him talk – about school mostly, what courses he thinks he’ll take.
At one point she says, ‘It was smart of you to pick a school as far away from me and Dad as you could.’
He looks startled. ‘That wasn’t why I picked it. That had nothing to do with it.’
‘Really? I’ve always thought it was.’
‘Mom, you can’t believe the number of things in my life that have nothing to do with you at all. At all. It’s like you always feel guilty or something: you caused this, you caused that.’ He shakes his head. ‘I went to Stanford (a) because I got in and that impressed the hell out of me about myself, and (b) because Loie Griffith was going there.’
‘Loie Griffith? That anorexic shrimp? That … peanut of a girl?’
‘Love is blind,’ he says.
She sighs. ‘Ain’t it the truth.’
They each drink and sit back. The waiter goes by, and Ryan signals him. He asks for chips or pretzels, something to eat. Then he says, ‘Do you think Uncle Cam is … well, dangerous?’
‘I don’t know, hon. He is such a humorless guy, finally.’
‘What does humor have to do with it?’
‘It just does. Believe me, it does.’
‘That’s ridiculous, Mom. What could possibly be funny in this situation?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, of course, really nothing is. I don’t mean that kind of humor, I guess. Just … I guess I don’t think you can forgive yourself for anything – much less forgive anyone else – if you can’t somehow let go of … what? The gravity of everything? Something like that.’
He frowns. He drinks some of his beer from the heavy mug and sets it down with a thunk. ‘So you do think he’s dangerous,’ he says after a minute. The waiter comes back with a cellophane bag of pretzels and sets it in front of Ryan. ‘Oh, thanks,’ he says.
Lottie is pondering it. She thinks of Cam as she’s seen him a few times in adolescence – enraged or in despair. Out of control. She thinks of his calm on the telephone with her. She thinks of the picture Elizabeth painted of him in San Francisco. ‘I don’t know if he’s dangerous or not,’ she says. ‘It appears I don’t really know much about Cam.’
‘How can you say that? You grew up with him.’ He’s dumped the bag out on the table, and Lottie reaches across and takes a pretzel.
She laughs. ‘Neither of us grew up at all together. We didn’t even begin until after we’d stopped living together.’ She chews the pretzel, frowning. ‘Nobody grows up in a home such as ours. You just wait to be done with it, and you hope you’ll have the opportunity to grow up later.’
He seems struck by this and is silent for a moment. Lottie looks at him. He’s beginning to have
a line, a kind of permanent frown line, across his forehead.
Suddenly he says, ‘Yeah, you’re right, in a way, I think. I mean, I really think I didn’t grow up at all till I got to England.’
Lottie is startled that he has so misunderstood her remark; but then just as glad, really, that he’s missed the bitterness in her point. She asks him about England, and he talks about it. Then about his feeling of being too American there – sort of a sweet, dumb person. ‘Like Goofy,’ he says, and imitates Goofy’s laugh.
‘What was Goofy, anyway?’ she asks after a minute. ‘A dog?’
‘Yeah, a dog, I think.’ He makes a face at her. ‘What does it matter, Mom? Why are you always asking questions like that?’
‘Am I? Like what?’ Lottie is surprised.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I can’t explain. You have a very … tangential brain, let’s say.’ Someone has started the jukebox, soupy music. Someone like Percy Faith. Yes. ‘A Summer Place.’ ‘But actually, that’s really kind of how I felt. Doglike. They were all, you know, elegant, cynical – the Brits. Very articulate. And I was this doglike, eager person. I thought things mattered that we were talking about. Doglike. Yes. And that’s really how they treated me. I mean, while being quite puffickly civil. And I kind of reacted by getting even worse. Even more “Amurrican,” or something like that, there.’ He pretended to swagger in his seat. And then his face opened, painfully. ‘But I have to say, it was the first time I thought of that stuff, that I saw myself in those terms. And it changed me. It did make me grow up – a lot – to face this sort of version of myself.’
‘So now what?’ Lottie asks after a minute.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, what do you do with this information?’
‘Fuck if I know.’ He grins. ‘Go back to school. Hang out. Have some brews. Let the river of time wash over me.’ He sobers. ‘I don’t know. I’m not very happy right now, I guess. And this thing with Jessica. It feels like, in a way, the same stuff.’
‘What do you mean?’