Come With Me

by Helen Schulman

  “Dan?” asked Amy. She was asking about his day, in her way.

  He glared at her.

  “Amy?” asked Dan, with a mocking edge in his voice. There was nothing new with him.

  “No, just Donny, you know,” said Amy, apologetically. She was sorry that she even asked.

  They all kept eating, although Amy wasn’t hungry any longer.

  * * *

  After her morning run, Amy met Donny up on campus. That was her pick. She hadn’t wanted the office. On this, she and Donny agreed. The last thing either one of them needed was spies—you couldn’t trust anyone with this stuff, he said, and Amy concurred. She categorized the whole operation as top secret classified.

  “Let’s just do it. We’ll go back to my room,” Donny said. “Adnan’s training for the Deathride. He’s occupé.”

  “Impressive, Donny,” said Amy.

  “My French?” said Donny. “I’ve been practicing!”

  “The Deathride,” said Amy.

  One hundred and twenty-nine miles of biking, 1,500 feet of climbing, and five passes in the California Alps, Alpine County. Adnan had been boasting about it all semester.

  Amy was glad Adnan was “occupé.” The dorm was fine by her; after months of starting the start-up she was comfortable there. When she and Donny entered the guys’ room, much was the same as it had been when she had last left it. Donny’s bed was unmade. He was still sleeping in a sleeping bag on the two-hundred-dollar memory-foam mattress topper that Lauren had sent him with. There was a wet towel on Donny’s desk chair, but Amy knew just where the hook was behind the door, so she hung it up. The scent of mildew and B.O. was familiar—she hoped it wouldn’t linger on her fingers. At least that morning Donny had taken a shower. She hadn’t. She’d gone straight to campus from running. Donny saged his room sometimes, so she preferred to concentrate on the aromatic herb’s lingering spice—that girl he liked from his English class had told him that sageing a room could rid it of evil properties.

  Adnan’s side of the room was neat as a pin. Amy never understood how they could stand living and working together, but they did. The Odd Couple.

  “You can sit at my desk,” said Donny, even though Amy had already sat herself down there. He’d given her permission for something she’d automatically taken for granted. There must be a word for that, Amy thought. Or an analogy, like there used to be in the verbal SATs: Love is to marriage what attachment is to grief?

  “I’m going to put headphones on you, and you can wear these little cardboard box goggles I got snail mail from the New York Times. They use them for VR,” said Donny.

  “You subscribe to the New York Times?” Amy was surprised.

  “Lifelong bar mitzvah gift,” said Donny. “That is if the paper outlives me, which I doubt. Part of my trust fund.”

  He pointed to the goggles. “Okay, put it on. It’ll be better when I build my own instrument, but this will have to do for now.”

  Amy put on Donny’s headphones and those weird little cardboard glasses. Donny leaned over her and typed.

  “Also, maybe you should smoke some weed,” Donny said.

  “Why?” said Amy.

  “Why not?” said Donny. He lit up the joint that was in the ashtray on his desk—even though it was a no-smoking dorm. He toked hard and then handed it to Amy.

  Why the fuck not, Amy thought. This is already weird, why not make it weirder. She inhaled deeply and coughed. It had been a while. After her eyes stopped tearing, she inhaled again. This time the smoke went down more smoothly. She handed the joint back to Donny. He took another hit and pressed enter on the keyboard.

  * * *

  Amy ran.

  She ran, and she ran, and she ran. She hadn’t known that it was in her, that she even had the capacity to run this fast: she couldn’t catch her breath. Her heart was beating up into her throat; it had already abandoned her itching, aching chest. Electric shocks were sparking throughout the space inside her rib cage where her heart was supposed to be: Was this cardiac arrest? The voltaic storm raging throughout her body was alarming. Her shoulders ached and her back burned, her lungs had sunken almost flat, they couldn’t inflate fully enough or fast enough. It felt like she was drowning.

  Amy was drowning as she ran. There was no air. She couldn’t pull enough oxygen in. She was depleted. All the energy she had was spent in moving her legs forward, one after the other, her feet slapping against the pavement in those stupid flip-flops, all the strength with which she had been born was exhausted, it had leaked out the bottoms of her feet. She was fueled now only by fear.

  She tripped, she tripped and she fell, but it felt instead as if she were flying. Like she fell up before she fell down. Air finally entering her lungs for the first time in forever: it buoyed her.

  In the air, filled with air, floating above the sidewalk, Amy could see her little boy grinning up at her; he turned his face back to look. She must have screamed. He was all cheeks and golden-red curls; he was grinning because he thought that he was winning.

  (She’d only put him down for one hot second to unfold the stroller and strap his twin brother in. Stupid, stupid. She should have secured him first. She wasn’t thinking. Her mind had been on someone else.)

  This was her punishment. He was grinning at her and running ahead of her straight into the street, so small still that the drivers of the cars whizzing by on El Camino could not possibly see his sturdy little body over their hoods and bumpers; he kept turning his head to smile the happiest smile she’d ever seen as he pulled farther and farther away from her. Was he thinking this was all a game? This is no game, Theo, she’d shouted when he’d first taken off, and then: Stop! Stop! Until there had not been enough air to run and to shout with at the same time.

  There was a man up ahead. He was texting on his cell phone. Surely he would turn and stop the little boy, but the man’s head was locked down, a swan-necked lamp, whatever light he possessed was fixed and shining onto his own keypad. Stop him! Amy had shouted when she could still shout, but the man didn’t look up and Amy’s shouts only made Theo charge ahead faster. Then, when she’d finally been running on pure adrenaline and the liquid smoke of her bones, her marrow vaporizing, burning herself out, she tripped and Theo burst out laughing.

  Theo laughed as Amy flew through the air like she was a graduate of Clown College, and as she fell onto the sidewalk, scraping her palms, tearing her pants, the skin on her knees, blood welling where her teeth met her tongue and entered it, Theo ran laughing into the street and she could not reach him. The cars screeched and the man screamed, Oh, my God! He hit him! He hit him!

  I am entering hell, thought Amy.

  Amy ran.

  She ran and she ran and she ran. She did not know it was in her to run this fast; she would do anything to get away from her brother Michael. He was chasing her. They were on a family picnic in Golden Gate Park. He was coming up from somewhere behind her, where she could not see him. She was running so hard trying to keep away that there was no time to waste to turn and look back.

  Her parents were eating cheese and bread and vegetable slices—cucumbers and green pepper and carrots and celery sticks—her dad was drinking a beer; his eyes were closed. He seemed to like the feel of the sun on his face. His glasses were in his right hand, giving the bridge of his nose a rest; there was often a little red dent on it. Her mother in her ponytail and plaid shirt and Levi’s had the newspaper spread out before her crossed legs, reading and talking out loud about what she read. Sometimes she took the glasses out of Amy’s dad’s hand and put them on herself to read the fine print.

  Eric, Amy’s older brother, was not even there. He was off at some dumb place, some concert or party or bedroom or parked car with his girlfriend, Elodie—Amy was nine years old, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew about the flannel camp blanket he kept in the back of his van. Elodie had shiny blond hair that she wore in two braids that always unraveled; her hair was so silky it was practically fluid. Elodie wore cutoff
shorts and Indian backless long-sleeve tops that tied under her shoulder blades with two narrow single strings. Tiny crystal beads hung across her clavicle and silver bracelets clattered from her wrists halfway up her slender, willowy arms.

  This was long before Eric died in a rock climbing accident. He was probably wasted, but they never did an autopsy; her mother had not wanted to know. Her mother was a person who did not want to know a lot of things, except maybe what was in the newspaper. Eric was still in high school then. He was around, he still lived with them, but he’d already left her for Elodie.

  What kind of pretentious bullshit French name is that? Michael said, her parents are from Pennsylvania, when Eric had introduced them. He’d said it out loud. Elodie had just good-naturedly rolled her big blue eyes; they were the color of a swimming pool in a magazine. My parents met on a bridge in Paris, she said. She had put out her delicate hand to shake, with her turquoise rings and silver bracelets, and her rose oil perfume on her little white wrist, the lacy blue veins looking like waxed organza ribbons tying her up like a gift. A gift Eric was now probably unwrapping somewhere on the Peninsula, Amy thought. There was no one in Golden Gate Park or on planet Earth who would bother to shield her from Michael.

  No one cared about the things he did to her. When he was bored, for fun, he’d kick her so hard in the stomach when he babysat her and her parents went to the movies, that sometimes blood would come out of her vagina and stain her panties. She’d throw them away because they were evidence that the way he tortured her was real. Too painful for her parents. Too painful even for her.

  Tag you’re it, Michael had called as he started to chase her. I’ll give you five four three two one, but Amy had already taken off out of a bolt of sheer unadulterated terror at the number four. Because she’d taken off, her mother would later say she’d agreed to play the game.

  Now she was running.

  Amy, wait up!

  She ran as fast as she could, already mourning the lost sovereignty of her body, running over a hill when she tripped on a rock and she fell, sprawling flat on the cool wild lawn that hadn’t been trimmed in forever. (Those budget cuts, her mother said later, when trying to ascertain whether Amy needed stitches below her chin or not.)

  The grass was tall, so tall if Amy spread herself thin, thinner even than she already was—she was trying to disappear—then maybe Michael wouldn’t be able to find her.

  Her mouth was in the dirt. It tasted green. She could feel her chin bleeding into the grass, and she licked it. That fine iron taste of soil and blood and grass rolled on her tongue. The sun hit her bare legs below her cutoff shorts and it filtered through the back of her T-shirt. It felt so good on her arms, which smelled, even at this distance away from her nose, like bread. They were flattened in a cactus shape, surrounding her head.

  She thought, God, let me die now, I’ll believe in you if you just let me die now. The sun feels so good and Michael hasn’t found me yet.

  Amy ran.

  She ran and she ran and she ran. She’d taken the subway to Fifty-Ninth Street and then jogged on the molten asphalt, heat steaming up to scald her bare legs. She entered the sultry, shabby park where it began, at its mouth, on Fifth Avenue, around the corner and across the street from the Plaza Hotel, where the horse carriages gathered, surrounded by flies and little haystacks of manure. She breathed that earthy odor in—it was moist and thick—and the stench of the sweat of the men sleeping on the wooden benches as she ran farther into the park, and then the sticky scent of stale cotton candy and honey-roasted peanuts fried in rancid oil, until she found a running lane next to one of the car arteries and hit her stride. There was so much on her mind! She needed to dump some stress! What was she doing in this crazy, polluted city, wasting her life on him?

  He’d come home the night before after she’d already gone to bed and was curled up with the cat, LMNOP (they called her Elle), a little gray tabby, a runt, Amy’s book opened near her face; she’d tried so hard to stay up reading. She saw double when she was that tired. She’d had to close one eye to see straight and lean the hardcover against the wall because she was too tired to hold it ajar, but then the other eye must have closed, too, because she woke up to the smell of another woman’s vagina on his face when he climbed up into the loft bed, naked because of the heat, it was so hot up there, and leaned over to kiss her.

  Sorry I’m late, he’d said. It was 3:00 a.m. They had a digital clock that glowed in the dark. It sat next to the little fan he’d brought home; he’d found it on Avenue A. He’d built a small shelf for her to put it on, plus her books, and his glass of water. He made gestures like this in the name of love; he brought her flowers during the day, and sometimes when he came home so late it was almost morning he brought her fresh cinnamon buns from the bakery on Second Avenue. She was pregnant. She was going to tell him. She was going to ask him: What should she do? What should we do? But what if he wanted to get married? Who could be married to him? He had no job, he wanted to be an actor, he read her poetry and talked politics and philosophy and strummed all day on his guitar—and he used his good looks to get over on everyone, even her. He was too pretty, and it was too late at night and it was too late anyway. This summer with him, following him to this hot urban place, living with him in this stupid overpriced dump, paying the rent when he went on auditions and was out every night, this was the last straw. The girl didn’t matter and yes also she did. There were so many girls, girls she knew and didn’t and to be fair she’d had her own boy on the side, off and on with him, too, during the torturous time they’d been together.

  I’m so glad I’m not young, her mother had said on the phone. Amy was trying to do better. Trying to call home once a month, but by God that was too hard, maybe even harder than it was trying to stay with this guy.

  When she woke up, he was still dead to the world. It was too early to fight and too hot for her to fall back asleep again. She’d made her way down the loft bed ladder carefully (she’d tumbled before), pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and her Pumas, and headed out to East Seventh Street. The punks were already up or maybe they’d never gone to bed. They were drinking their morning beers in their dog collars, some of the guys in leather vests. How could anyone wear leather on a morning hot like this one? They were already begging for money, so she gave them some. It wasn’t worth getting spat on again, even though her boyfriend said that most of the kids on their corner were just taking a walk on the wild side and came from Great Neck, or were English majors at NYU. She stopped at the bodega and got a cup of coffee, with milk, no sugar, and a bagel with butter. She walked over to the 6 train, and took it uptown to the park.

  It felt good to run, to sweat not just from heat, but also from exertion. It felt good to see trees and grass and dogs and little children in bathing suits in strollers and their tired parents heading to the sprinklers. Their neighborhood didn’t have any of that. It had Indian food and cold sesame noodles thick with Skippy peanut butter and great old-man bars and a café with belly dancers and all the drugs anyone could want, although she was not sure she wanted any more. She ran up to Sixty-Fourth Street, outside the zoo. She imagined she could hear the sounds of the animals waking up. Maybe she would stop there on her way back. Maybe she would go into the penguin house and watch the birds in the cold water zip and zoom like swallows through an empty barn. That’s what her thoughts felt like anyway, they zipped and zoomed. But first she’d run to the Sheep Meadow. There were always people there, sunbathing and playing Frisbee. She wondered if they slept there all night.

  She decided to run across the mall. There were trees by the mall and probably it was shadier and maybe she wouldn’t have to run on cement, maybe she could run on dirt. That’s when she turned without looking and she heard a guy call: Heads up! He was on a bike and he whooshed right by her. She turned toward his voice, and as she stepped down she landed on her foot funny and her ankle gave. She heard it pop and she fell. She had no health insurance. She was here on an in
ternship. She knew it was broken, even before she tried to stand up. They lived in a fourth-floor walkup. Their bed was a ladder’s height off the ground. She knew she was fucked, even before a nice older couple stopped to see if she was okay. I’m a doctor, he said. He’s the best, said his wife. Can he arrange for my abortion? Amy wanted to ask but didn’t. He requested permission to touch her ankle.

  She’d rubbed her forehead with her right hand and then ran it across her nose when she sniffled—she was trying not to cry, it hurt so much, even though the doctor was gentle—and she smelled the other girl’s cunt on her fingers.

  Your ankle is broken, said the doctor.

  Yes, she said. I know. I could tell.

  She’d known her ankle was broken before the rest of her hit the pavement, while she watched the biker whiz away. He was wearing a Walkman. He probably didn’t even know that she fell.

  This is no game, Theo, Amy shouted when he first took off, and then: Stop! Stop! Until there had not been enough air to run and to shout with at the same time. There was a man up ahead. He was texting on his cell phone. Stop him! Amy shouted when she could still shout, but the man didn’t look up and Amy’s shouts only made Theo smile more and run faster anyway. And then, when she’d finally been running on pure adrenaline fueled by fear, she tripped and Theo burst out laughing.

  Theo burst out laughing when Amy tripped and fell, and that the man heard. He looked up as Theo ran by him and leaned over and picked the kid up by the collar of his shirt. Theo’s little legs were still racing, like he was treading water, only he was stationary in the air. Now it was Amy’s turn to laugh, but of course she couldn’t; she was a bleeding, sobbing hot mess. She was crying tears of gratitude and relief as the man held him up and said: Lady, this belong to you?

  Her mouth was in the dirt. The sun hit her bare legs below her cutoff shorts. It filtered through the back of her T-shirt. It felt so good on her arms, which smelled, even at this distance away from her nose, like bread.