by Paula McLain
“He’s not crazy. Not any more than I’m crazy.” She was nearly barking at him. People on the boardwalk hurried by them, pretending not to notice. Suzette didn’t care; in fact, she seemed to like the audience. “And he is Jamie Lynn’s father. What, I’m just supposed to turn my back on him when he’s in trouble? Maybe you’re that way but I’m not.”
Raymond knew well and good what was supposed to happen now. He was supposed to back off and apologize, offer her some treat or bribe to get them past this moment, whatever it was she’d wanted from the beginning, had wanted probably from the moment she called him two nights before. He felt manipulated and exhausted, and he didn’t want to play. That Suzette would even mention Jamie’s name meant the stakes were higher than he bargained for when he got in the car.
She took a deep breath. “I want to go see him.”
This was the card Raymond had been waiting for—and now that it was on the table, he didn’t want to be within striking distance of it. “Go to Bakersfield? You’re not serious.”
“What do you mean? It’ll be fine. We’ll just pass through and make sure everything’s okay. That’s all I want. A visit, I’m saying. What would be the harm?”
“It’s a lousy idea and I have no intention of getting involved in it.”
“You expect me to go alone?”
“I don’t expect you to go at all, but let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you did go see Benny. If he really is dying, what do you think you’re going to do about that? Give him flowers? Hold his hand?”
“I don’t know.” She ducked her head, began to twirl a strand of her hair around a nervous finger. “I hadn’t thought it through.”
“I guess not. And if you’re going to Bakersfield, would you stop by the house to see Jamie?”
“No. I don’t know,” she said again. “What do you think?”
“It’s a small town. Berna will hear about it somehow, and it doesn’t seem fair to drive through and not stop. Besides, it’s been two years at least since you went to visit Jamie.”
“I know. I know. You don’t have to remind me,” she said. And before he knew it, she’d put her arms around his waist and nestled her chin, rubbing her head back and forth against his shirt. “Of course I want to see the baby,” she said quietly. “But Berna makes me feel like shit. She always has. I don’t think I can handle her right now.” Suzette pressed into him more tightly, as if she thought the wind might pick her up and blow her out to sea. “Just let me get my head together and straighten out this Benny situation. Once I’m feeling better, we can go back and have a proper visit. What do you say?”
There was that “we” again. Who was he kidding? No matter how carefully he’d framed his questions, set up his argument, she hadn’t believed for a second that Raymond wouldn’t go with her if that’s what she wanted. And how had one letter from Benny, no matter how creepy his dreams, made it a “situation,” or anything that involved Suzette, for that matter? Something was going on that she wasn’t telling him, and until she did, he couldn’t with any conscience leave her alone. He also couldn’t say what he was thinking—not about Benny, and certainly not about Jamie, who wasn’t a baby anymore, no matter how she might be fixed that way in Suzette’s mind. She was six years old, a little girl, a person with a story of her own, not a doll placed in a closet for safekeeping. Not a bit of managed history. But Suzette wasn’t capable of hearing this and even if she were, she’d only hate Raymond for saying it. Nothing would be changed or fixed.
Above the wharf, seagulls reeled, barking in a feud over caramel corn. A small girl in red shoes tossed a few kernels at a time into the air then ducked, running with a shriek back to her father, who leaned against the storefront of a curio shop. She hid her face between his legs and then pulled away to ask for more popcorn. The father laughed and told her no. Then shook his head, said “Be careful,” and filled her hands to the brim.
Raymond knew that he and Suzette were bound similarly. No matter how much he resisted her initially, he would go with her to Bakersfield to see about Benny. He would do this for her even if he didn’t understand why she needed to go, because she was his sister. He would do anything for her. Still, he was worried. Who knew how they would find Benny, or what effect seeing him again would have on Suzette. When Berna found out they’d been through town, she’d be angry, that was guaranteed, and Raymond would have to work to make things right. But Suzette had her mind set; there was no use talking her out of it.
Off in the distance, the water-treatment plant groaned three times, loudly, then settled, as if it were giving in too. “We’ll go,” he said. “But afterward, you’re coming back to San Francisco with me for a while.”
“I can’t do that,” she backpedaled. “I have responsibilities, you know. I work here, if you hadn’t noticed. And what about John?”
“Just for a few days. A week or two.”
“I don’t know. Can we talk about it later? I can’t think about it now.” She hugged him tightly, her arms slim and fierce, a lovely little boa constrictor around his ribs. When she peered up at him, her smile was tight and wan. “Let’s not decide now, okay? Can’t we just have a good day?”
“Sure, kitten,” Raymond said, feeling twisted up and utterly depleted. “Whatever you say.”
NIGHTS IN WHITE SATIN
Fawn’s makeover was starting to take effect. The new haircut was flattering and made me stand out more, as most girls were wearing long hair just then, or razored-looking shags that fell well below the ears. Although occasionally it grew willful and stood on end, resembling the fuzz of a duckling, the haircut did make my eyes more prominent, just as Fawn had promised. With Fawn modeling a diet for me, I had also lost almost ten pounds in the weeks since the beginning of the summer. My waist was more defined, my cheekbones more visible. It was now nearly the middle of July, and thanks to the hours of sunbathing Fawn and I had logged since early June, my skin was tawny and lucid, not a pimple in sight.
It was as if I’d grown a new skin entirely, as if I were a new person. Fawn would dress me up in her clothes—a tube top and ass-grazing miniskirt—and parade me through the neighborhood to see if I could draw the stares of local boys, and even men driving home from work to their drudge wives. When I did, I felt approved of in a bone-deep, satisfying way. But there were other, deeper changes too. I could breathe, for instance. Maybe I was growing out of my spells. Maybe they were tied to my past, to Bakersfield and my unhappiness there—or maybe, like every other good thing that was happening to me, Fawn was responsible. She was a force of nature, that was certain, a neutron star pulling everything her way. And if it was true too that most of these changes felt as if they were happening to me, outside of my control, then it was worth it. I liked that I was growing more unrecognizable to myself by the day. In fact, it couldn’t happen fast enough for me. I wanted to be there already, done, fully cooked, like those cicadas that had waited underground for their real lives to begin.
If there was one thing that was keeping me from being entirely comfortable in this new skin, it was my fear that Fawn was growing bored with me as a project. When she lavished attention on me, it was like being bathed in warm light. But just as quickly, that light could flick off again, and nothing I did pleased her, not even reading Fawn her horoscope or analyzing her dreams with the help of the symbol guide in July’s ’Teen magazine. The days were too hot, the iced water tasted like the plastic jug we refrigerated it in, the tuna fish salad Fawn had happily eaten four days a week for lunch was now watery and disgusting. The only thing that would do at such times was a boiled egg, which she then chilled and salted and cut into a billion tiny pieces. I tried this menu myself but found that after lunch I was hungrier than before. When Fawn would go to the bathroom or take a shower, I’d sneak into the refrigerator and cram the first thing I found there into my mouth, even if it was cold rice or a desiccated chicken leg. And then I was still hungry.
Fawn was also growing critical of Raymond, which made
me feel threatened in a way I didn’t completely understand. “He’s a bit of a freak, don’t you think?” she had said on more than a few occasions.
Was Raymond a freak? I honestly didn’t know. He kept so utterly to himself and had from the beginning. His routine hadn’t changed much if at all since Fawn had arrived. In the evenings, he either read his stupid Civil War books or went back to his room to play records and do who knows what (he always kept his door closed)—or he went out. Where “out” was I had no idea.
Aside from a slight paunch and some thinning on top, Raymond was good-looking for a guy pushing forty. To women his age, I imagined he was very good-looking indeed, and yet he seemed to spend most of his time alone. Why had he never married? Why no children?
“Don’t you see?” Fawn persisted. “Anyone that secretive has got to have something to hide.”
“Maybe he’s just really boring?”
“You’re boring, sweetheart,” Fawn said, and made as though to pat me on the head (good dog, good dog, stay). “Raymond has got a story. I’d bet my right tit on it.”
Whether Raymond had some fascinating secret life or not, he tried, at least superficially, to keep us from having one. Our curfew was eleven o’clock, weekdays and weekends alike, though it felt to me that this was one of the ways Raymond “parented” us from a distance. He delivered the edict of the curfew flatly at dinner one night, the same way he asked me and Fawn about our day—as if he’d read parenting advice or instructions in some pamphlet in a doctor’s office or checkout line at the drugstore. Even so, I didn’t question the curfew until Fawn let me know how ridiculous it was.
“Rules are made to be broken, right?” she said one night, then pried off the window screen in our room. It was after midnight and the house had long been quiet. She hoisted her body up easily, straddled the window frame, and said, “Get your shoes on.”
“Where are we going?”
“Does it matter?” Fawn grinned then, a metallic-looking flash of teeth in the dark, and shimmied out like an eel.
Once we were both outside, Fawn took off down the street at a dead sprint. Veering around a corner, her body melted away, leaving only the sound of her flat sandals smacking pavement.
“Hey wait up,” I called, and tailed her, tripping because I couldn’t seem to stop looking up. The trees swung with wind. It occurred to me that I’d never been outside this late. Everything seemed surprisingly clear and visible given how dark it was. Backlit by streetlights, each leaf-clustered branch of the elms and maples was etched and specific, with its own shape and bend. Exposed bits of sidewalk glowed like phosphorescent Xs on a treasure map, leading me on.
When I finally caught up, Fawn was lying on the long, rectangular lawn in front of Queen of Peace, her arms flung up over her head. “Come on in,” she said, backstroking the grass. “The water’s fine.”
It was better than fine. When we sunbathed, I always felt the grass prickling even through my beach towel, but now it was cool and liquid-feeling against the back of my legs and arms, almost as if it were another thing altogether. And perhaps it was, I thought. Perhaps the church shipped in grass seed from Florida or Hawaii, somewhere warm and tropical, and babied it. I pictured nuns kneeling with pinking shears, nail buffers, tweezers. Somebody certainly took good care of the place. There wasn’t so much as a cigarette butt on the sidewalk, and the line of curbing out front looked as if it’d been rinsed and patted dry.
Over our heads, upside down, was the imposing main building, which was made of some kind of pale stone. Rising out of the roofline was a pointy and spotlit octagonal spire.
“It looks like a giant upside-down snow cone,” I said, gesturing.
“Our Lady of the Snow Cone,” Fawn agreed. She stood then and ran off across the perfect grass, her signature laugh trailing behind her like a carnival balloon.
Fawn’s laugh was becoming as familiar to me as the freckles on the back of my hand. Consistent, utterly traceable from its beginning—a breathy, effervescent high note, much higher than her speaking or singing voice—it lowered in a trill, like a thrush call in reverse. Gathering force, it fell in on itself and ended abruptly, with a puff of breath—haa!—punching out of her open mouth. At first it had bothered me, how the laugh never altered a note. Was it entirely manufactured, practiced as the notes to a song Fawn could sing in her sleep? Maybe, but I found myself submitting to it anyway, the way one did with Fawn, agreeing without question. Laughing back.
Inside the garden, Fawn stood beside a greenhouse. Its roof and walls were covered entirely with thin plastic, a light inside making the sheeting look spectral. Circling the building, we found a wooden door listing slightly off center. Fawn reached it first, and tugged the door open with a creak.
“The sign says No Trespassing, Fawn.” I pointed like a librarian, then lowered my finger quickly, embarrassed.
“It’s not even locked,” Fawn said, stepping over the threshold. “If they really wanted to keep us out, don’t you think they’d lock it?”
We are so going to get caught, I thought to myself, but followed anyway. Fawn had this effect, a moth-to-flame thing. She gave off heat and light, a kind of pleasant buzzing that was not just addictive but catching. When I was with her, I felt I glowed too, buzzed too. In this regard, I wasn’t just following Fawn but following the self that Fawn made infinitely more interesting. Why wouldn’t I want to be where Fawn was, trespassing or no?
Inside the greenhouse was like a living chaos of plants—roots and tendrils, papery bulbs with onionlike skins. Along another table, bucketfuls of potting soil had been dumped to form a dark hill.
“Hey, look.” Fawn pointed to a corner of the ceiling, where a lost firefly butted against the plastic, his tail end blooming on and off. “He’s trapped in here. It’s so sad,” Fawn said. “He’ll probably die in here and there’s not even another firefly to have sex with.”
“Fireflies have sex?”
“Everything has sex, retard. Even these plants. What we should really do is go out and find another firefly, and bring it in here. It’d be like a firefly death row, but at least they’d be happy.” Rather than moving toward the door, however, Fawn sat down where she was, right onto a pile of mulch, and sighed dramatically. “I hate it here.”
In the dirt? I thought. The greenhouse? Moline? “We could go home,” I said.
“I can’t go home. That’s the problem.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t know?” Fawn said incredulously. “Raymond hasn’t told you?”
“Told me what?”
“That I’m a very bad girl. This is my punishment, I’ve been sent to hell.”
“C’mon,” I said, “Moline isn’t that bad.”
“Says you. You’re not stuck here.” As the words hung in the air between us, Fawn reconsidered and said, “Well, I guess you are stuck here, but not in the same way. You live here now. I’m vacationing on Alcatraz.”
I sat down too, reclining into the mulch pile, not caring how dirty I’d get. The bottom had dropped out of what I thought was my summer. I felt dizzy. “So what did you do?” I asked, raking my hands along beside me, bits of bark lodging under my fingernails. I was terrified of Fawn’s answer.
“I fucked my drama teacher,” Fawn said. She paused for effect. “Or rather, he fucked me.”
I couldn’t keep my mouth from dropping open. “Your teacher? How old was he?”
“Thirty maybe. I don’t know. He wasn’t a dinosaur or anything.” She absently scratched a mosquito bite on her calf. “It wasn’t a big deal until his wife got hysterical and called the school and my parents. Then there was this whole ordeal. Mr. Jenkins got fired and I got suspended. My mom hasn’t said a word to me in months, even before I got here. She won’t even come to the phone when my dad calls to check in, if you haven’t noticed.”
I had noticed, but I didn’t say so. There were about a hundred questions I wanted to ask Fawn, including how such an affair had ever gotten started, but m
y curiosity was far outweighed by a sense of disappointment. Here I was, having the best time of my life, happier than I had ever been, and Fawn considered me part of her stay at Alcatraz. Had I been totally kidding myself thinking Fawn and I were friends? Did I have everything wrong? Hot tears stung my eyes, and I turned away to hide them.
“Let’s get out of here,” Fawn said. “All this chlorophyll, I think I feel my pores clogging.” But when she stood up, I thought I could see a glaze of tears in Fawn’s eyes as well. Was she regretting what she’d done? Homesick? Or simply feeling impossibly stuck?
As we headed back toward Raymond’s, I didn’t know what time it was and didn’t care. There were no cars out, so we walked down the center of the street, the asphalt ringing hollowly under our sandals. All the way up, as far as I could see, streetlamps receded until they were radiant, haloed toothpicks. The asphalt unfurled toward that end, a gummy black carpet or runway absent of anything that might fly. If Fawn was trapped, then I was too. My happiness was linked to Fawn’s, and my misery as well. But what about when summer ended? It was inevitable—the weeks already seemed to be flying by—and then what? Fawn would return to Phoenix, reformed or not, and I would be marooned, abandoned yet again. I felt panic rise in my chest, the all-too-familiar heaviness creeping up on me from the dense bottom of my lungs. But just when things started to get really bad, when I was sure I was going to collapse in the middle of the street, revealing to Fawn just how weak and broken I was, I saw Raymond’s yard come into view. As it loomed like a green-black oasis in the dark, the throttling sensation began to ebb. For now, at least, we were home.
The next night we slipped out the window again, but this time we went to Turner Park, picking our way through shadowy trees toward the picnic shelter, where clumps of young people slouched noncommittally in loose circles or sat on the scarred tops of picnic tables. Boys and girls wore long hair, faded denim shorts with unraveling edges, flip-flops, and bright cotton T-shirts with sayings like KEEP ON TRUCKIN’ and HAVE A NICE DAY. To adults, the two sexes likely appeared indistinguishable from each other, but Fawn and I knew the difference as if it were painted in neon. We could smell a teenage boy from a hundred paces; smell his skin, which was nothing like ours, and the soft hair on his legs and arms.