On the far side of the room, a small door opened, and a blur of bodies streamed into the bedroom. The door appeared to lead to a balcony, but the number of people coming through it seemed wildly out of proportion with the size of any balcony she’d ever seen. “I think I need some air,” she said. “Nice to meet you.” The man shrugged.
The balcony turned out to hold a spiral staircase, which led to a roof deck. Mary Ellen contemplated the twirling open ironwork and wondered if it was up to code. Up above, she could hear music and laughter, so curiosity got the better of her and she slowly, bravely made her way to the roof.
At the top, Mary Ellen hugged herself against the chill and tried to get her bearings in the sudden soaring openness. Peter’s house was in the middle of a long line of row houses, with another row backing up to it, and every house was topped with a roof deck, and every deck, it seemed, was having a party. Strings of glowing bulbs stretched from roof to roof, gathering everyone in a warm net of light as a shared soundtrack thumped from speakers two or three doors down. Beyond the rooftops, to the southwest, the towers of Center City pronged brightly into the sky, shrunk by distance to the same height as Peter’s neighborhood. A man in a flannel shirt poured something dark into Mary Ellen’s empty cup. She sipped. Bourbon. Well, why not.
Conversations were flowing all around her. Mary Ellen found herself slipping easily into one, and then another, even managing to say funny things, relevant things, to actually contribute to the muscular give-and-take. At the same time, she was becoming aware of a sluggishness in the mechanics of her eyes, requiring a concentrated effort to crank each face into focus as she turned from person to person, although she was pretty sure it wasn’t noticeable to anyone but herself. She formed her words with care, coordinating her lips and tongue with precision—or if not precision, composure. She found herself talking a lot about her photography (“I’m inspired by the work of Siskind”), and this spun off into declarations about the aesthetics of film, and the rigor of delayed gratification, and the degradation of photography as an art.
“Are you saying digital technology is killing the art form?” This was from a girl with long bangs wearing high-waisted pants and a batwing-sleeved sweater. She was too young to be dressing this way out of nostalgia, but the outfit was definitely bringing back a lot of memories for Mary Ellen, who suddenly longed for her favorite pair of fold-over-waist jeans.
“I’m just saying there’s so much faux seriousness out there these days, with the filters and the automatic selective focus and all that,” Mary Ellen replied. “It’s cheapening photography.”
“Well,” said the girl, “I’m not saying art history is irrelevant. I mean, yeah, studying the masters helps you situate your point of view.” She tossed her bangs out of her eyes. “But to me, the democratization of technology has radically energized the art of photography. It’s the institutions who are so heavily invested in outdated taxonomies and disciplinary structures—the galleries and museums profiting from a…a…freeze-dried conception of the photographic canon—who’ve been cheapened.”
Mary Ellen folded one arm against her stomach, using it to support the arm holding her cup aloft. She squinted at the girl, trying to sort the words she’d just heard into their proper order so she could figure out how to respond to them. Did she say taxidermy? “I thought you said taxidermy,” Mary Ellen exclaimed, laughing. “Did you say taxidermy?”
“No.”
Someone cranked the music up then, and a tidal wave of bass surged across the roof decks. Mary Ellen could feel it hit her chest; she felt it curl around her hips. The flannel-shirt-wearing, bourbon-pouring guy started bobbing in front of her, nodding his head to one side, then the other, shoulders slumped, hands limp. Mary Ellen bobbed along with him, enjoying this low-commitment style of dance. They were just letting the music flow through them, sharing a rhythmic urge, being in the moment, no pretense, no irony. Mary Ellen closed her eyes and swayed her hips, but this made her dizzy. She opened them, stumbled a little, laughed. Other people were dancing now; nobody was looking at her. The music was dark and nasty, full of strange vocals and dirty hooks.
Mary Ellen’s shoulders started getting into it; her arms began pulsing at her sides. When was the last time she’d danced? Her niece’s wedding? That hadn’t felt like this; this was different. This moment—the music, the net of light, the sky, the freedom to move however she wanted—was transformative. It was as though she’d split down the sides and wriggled out of herself, the real Mary Ellen finally set loose on the world.
Suddenly, she found herself dancing in front of Justine. Where had she come from? “Where did you come from?”
“Over there. Having fun?”
“Are you kidding? Look at me. I’m dancing!”
“Yes, you are.”
“Thank you.” Mary Ellen paused her dancing and brushed her hair from her forehead. “For bringing me. And everything else. Teaching me all that stuff, helping me with Birgit.” She took a drink. “I just wish I had more time for taking pictures, you know? Work—” She flapped her hand in the direction of Center City. “Ugh.”
“Forget work.” Justine pointed a finger at Mary Ellen’s chest. “It’s time to start shooting. You need to produce.”
“I know. It’s just such a crazy time of year—”
“Aaahhh.” Justine waved her hand impatiently. “I hate when people say that. It’s always a crazy time of year. Take a sabbatical!”
“A sabbatical? Lord, they would kill me. We’re launching this new positioning platform. You have no idea what a big deal it is. We’re shifting from the word ‘safety’ to the word ‘trust.’” Mary Ellen peered down into her cup, shaking her head, then suddenly looked up and laughed. “Oh my God, is that the stupidest thing you ever heard?”
“Well, you can’t get anything meaningful done in your spare time. You’ll never get the momentum you need. I think you should take some time off…at least a week or two.”
“I don’t know,” Mary Ellen said. “I’ve never done anything like that.” Justine’s determination was making her nervous. She seemed to think she could conjure a serious photographer out of thin air with nothing but the power of her will. “Can I ask you something?”
Justine leaned against the deck railing and raised her eyebrows.
“I guess I don’t…I don’t really get how the gallery business works. The commission part of it. Are you…?”
“What?”
“What’s your… I mean, what’s in it for you?”
“I’m not getting a cut or anything. Don’t worry.” Justine pulled her hair into a ponytail and let it go. “I did really well in my divorce. I just teach to keep from going crazy. And sometimes I see someone who could use a little mentoring, a leg up.”
“Oh. Well, thank you.”
“And to tell you the truth…” Justine turned and looked over the railing to the street below. Then she turned back to Mary Ellen. “Some people in this town have been acting like I’ve been put out to pasture or something, and that’s bullshit. I hated teaching at Tyler. I was so glad to get out of there. Tyler was not the reason my students did well. I was the reason.”
“I’m sure—”
“Put me anywhere. Put me at UArts, put me at the fucking Art Institutes, I don’t care. I can still find opportunities. Women, minorities—” She extended a hand toward Mary Ellen. “People in different…age brackets. I can find the voices nobody is listening to. I can help them be heard. I don’t need to be part of the elite art school establishment to do that.”
Mary Ellen smiled uncertainly, absorbing this new information. Was she a minority? Was Justine insecure? “I can’t believe anyone would doubt you,” she said. “That’s—”
“I know. So listen.” Justine pushed herself away from the railing. “I have a place you could use. For a week or two, whatever you can manage.”
“Really?�
��
“It’s a pretty great mountain house. I got it in the divorce. It’s north of the Poconos, at the top of a ravine overlooking a creek. There’s no TV, no internet, no cell service. It’s just you and the woods. I think it would be the perfect place to hunker down and work on your ideas.”
Mary Ellen looked around. The thread of the beat was still weaving itself through her chest, stitching her to the other dancers, pulsing through them all like the tides, like the dawns, like the impatient swell and collapse of life itself. She didn’t want it to end, and Justine seemed to be telling her it didn’t have to. “Did you say there’s no cell service? Is there a land line?”
“No. Nothing. I’m telling you, a lot of people would kill for the chance to stay there. I usually don’t invite anyone.”
“Well, in that case!” said Mary Ellen with a laugh. She took a drink, wondering if this was all too good to be true. It probably was.
“So you’ll go?”
“I don’t know. Fine, yes. Why not!” Mary Ellen laughed again, feeling the urge to dance some more.
“Great. This is good.” Justine tapped her upper lip with her index finger. “Just make sure you stay in the same abstract, textural zone, okay? You’ll want to try to develop a visual vocabulary, which will be easier in a limited environment. In the meantime, I’ll work on finding a large-format printer. We need to print everything huge…the bigger the better.”
“Okay.” Mary Ellen started bobbing up and down again, but Justine beckoned her toward the iron staircase. Mary Ellen sighed and followed her. At the top of the stairs, she paused, holding on to the railing with both hands, hesitating to lower herself onto the first step, which seemed to be miles away. A group of people was lining up behind her, like kids at the top of a water slide, so she had no choice but to proceed. As she went down, her heels kept getting caught in the ironwork, which was pierced with heel-size slits. She tried not to put any weight on her heels but kept forgetting, so she had to jerk her feet upward to free them each time they got caught. The stepping-down and jerking-up combination was confusing.
They finally made it to the balcony, then through the door to the bedroom. Justine took Mary Ellen’s hand and brought her through a crowd of people standing at the foot of the bed, then led her to the stairs. Mary Ellen ran her hand along the wavy plaster wall to steady herself as she followed Justine to the second floor. “I’ve decided it’s time to make some changes,” she said to Justine’s back. “I’ve known that for a while, but tonight things kind of came into focus for me, you know?” On the second floor, people were crowded around one of those tall Middle Eastern pipe things, sucking smoke from a long hose. Mary Ellen paused and stared, swaying a little, then hurried after Justine, who was winding her way down the next set of stairs.
“My daughters don’t need me anymore, my job feels pointless, and I don’t know… I think I ended up on the wrong path somehow.” She was feeling tired, suddenly. These stairs were exhausting, with their triangular treads, which required you to aim so precisely with your foot, lest you land on the narrow part with your big, not-so-narrow foot and plunge over the edge. The thought made Mary Ellen dizzy. She paused and leaned against the wall, trying to stop the spinning, but even though she was very still, the stairway continued to rotate around her, a little wobbly on its axis, like a bent bike wheel. “Justine?” Mary Ellen carefully lowered her right foot to the next step, but despite her best effort, it ended up on the narrow part of the triangle and skidded out from under her, and she slid down the next three or four steps, her calves like skis.
“Whoa!” said a man who was coming up the stairs as Mary Ellen came to a stop on her bottom, bourbon fumes rising off her chest, which felt wet. She set her empty cup on the step and realized the person talking to her was the cologne-wearing man from the bedroom. He held out his hand. “Can I help?”
“I’m fine.”
But he’d already taken her by the arm and was helping her down the rest of the stairs, gently guiding her as if she were elderly or recovering from surgery. “I’m fine,” she repeated, when they reached the ground floor. She pulled her arm away and looked around for Justine. “I’ve got to get going.”
“You’re sure you’re all right?”
“Of course I am,” Mary Ellen said impatiently, heading for the front door. “I’m just going to call my husband.” She paused and looked back at the man, whose thick, black eyebrows were drawn together. “My husband,” she repeated. “I’m married.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the man, and he raised his first two fingers to his forehead, giving her a salute. Under normal circumstances, this would seem like a friendly, slightly goofy send-off, but through her drunken haze, Mary Ellen understood that she was being made fun of. She whirled around, lost her balance, and grabbed on to a girl standing by the door.
“Sorry. Sorry.” Mary Ellen managed to get herself out the door and onto the front sidewalk, where she found Justine.
“Everything okay?”
“I’m fine,” Mary Ellen said, fumbling with her phone. “I just feel kind of mixed up. I don’t think I belong here.”
“Sure you do.” Justine took out a cigarette and lit it. “You just need to go home and sleep it off. Do you want me to call you a cab?”
“No thanks,” Mary Ellen said, sinking onto the stoop. “Matt’ll come get me.” Her uncomplaining chauffeur, her tether to the real world. She suddenly longed to see his face.
“Okay, well, we’ll talk,” Justine said. “Let me know what dates you want the house, and I’ll make sure someone comes to plow the driveway.”
Mary Ellen nodded. “CALL MATT,” she barked at her phone.
“Calling Matt,” the phone answered equanimously.
When she looked up, Justine was halfway down the block, nothing but a tall, thin shadow punctuated by a languidly moving, bright-orange speck of fire.
5
Ivy took one of the backpacks out of the closet and put a bottle of water in there, along with some clean clothes, a half-gone bar of grapefruit-scented soap, her shoes, and a map she’d found in the kitchen drawer. She took down the flying deer newspaper clipping, which she’d taped above her bed, and slid it back into her wallet. She layered a couple of shirts under and over her hoodie and jean jacket, pulled the rubber boots over three pairs of socks, pulled another pair of socks over her hands, and headed up the frost-bleached driveway to the road.
She hadn’t come close to waiting the twenty days she’d originally decided on, but it turned out she sucked at rationing food. She also sucked at keeping her thoughts under control. She’d started obsessing over the scene back home—what people were saying at school, what everyone thought about her wild lunge at freedom. Were people laughing at McFadden? Were rumors flying about Ivy—where she was, what she was doing? Did people finally understand what she was made of? It was like a bad rash, the itch to know, and the more she scratched at it, the more it drove her crazy.
Behind those thoughts were other, sneakier thoughts—that maybe, if people back in Good Hope had a newfound appreciation for her, it wouldn’t be so terrible to go back and start fresh. Sure, she’d get in trouble, but if she turned herself in, it wouldn’t be so bad. It couldn’t be worse than this—being stuck all alone in a glass box for days on end, trying not to eat all the food but lacking anything else to occupy her brain. If she had someone else around to talk to, maybe it wouldn’t be so hard. But as it was, she was getting pretty damn tired of listening to nothing but her own thoughts day in and day out.
She’d looked at the map and decided to head for a town called Eaton, southeast of Forks and a few miles from 84. It looked big enough to have a bus station. She’d buy a little food, see how much she had left for bus fare, then call Asa to find out what was going on.
She got up to the road and went left, which seemed like the right way, based on her guesswork with the map. She crossed to the
other side, and when she heard a car coming up from behind, she stripped a sock off one hand and held out her thumb, walking backward, trying to look friendly but not stupid. “Come on,” she muttered as the car slowed and a middle-aged woman peered curiously at her. After meeting Ivy’s eye, the woman jerked her eyes back to the road and sped off. Another car did the same, then a pickup truck. Ivy knew how she looked, with all the layers and no coat, oversize rubber boots, a sock on one hand. Not like a local high school girl headed to her boyfriend’s house, someone you could chat with about Friday’s game, then say, “Tell your momma I said hi,” and “Call me if you want a ride back home.” The only person who was going to pick Ivy up was somebody who liked what he saw: a skinny runaway expected by no one, teeth clenched against the cold, in no position to bargain.
She walked a while without putting her thumb out, keeping her eyes on the cellophane, straws, and plastic bottles that fluttered and rolled every time a car went by. Ivy knew how close she was to becoming a piece of that litter, blowing into the dark corners of towns where no one would want her. Exactly $52.89 stood between her and those matted, directionless kids, Please help scrawled on ripped cardboard, flea-bitten dog at the end of a piece of frayed rope. $52.89 and a sense of purpose.
A beat-up Honda pulled onto the shoulder just ahead of her. Ivy approached the driver’s window. An old man in a camouflage jacket and hat turned his head but didn’t look directly at her. One of his eyes was clouded over.
“Need a ride?”
The Runaways Page 7