“What do you mean? It’s a gift. I saw it and thought of you. I wanted you to have it. I also got you these books from the library. They’re plays. See? Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams…”
It was coming on now. Ivy could feel it—that familiar squeeze, like there was a locked seat belt crushing her chest, tightening its grip every time she tried to move. No way out, no way forward, just glass and snow and the suffocating weight of this lady’s need, her hot, hopeful breath and hungry, empty eyes looking at her like she wanted to swallow her whole. A mentor. Fuck. A mentor and an empty book. How far would that get her? About as far as the front door. About as far as the car that was stuck in a snowdrift and probably would be till March. She tried to take a deep breath, but her chest was too tight.
“Who—”
“Yes?”
Ivy gripped her knees. “Who are you?”
Mary Ellen blinked at her, still smiling. “What?”
“Whose house is this?”
“It’s mine, of course. I don’t know what you—”
“No, no, no, stop that. I don’t want to do this anymore. I know this isn’t your house; I know you don’t belong here. Just tell me. Who are you?”
Mary Ellen sat back, shaking her head in small, trembling movements. “This is how you thank me?”
“Tell me the truth.”
“I’ve been telling you the truth.”
“So you’re saying this really is your place. These are your books; these are your clothes.” Ivy yanked the hem of the shirt she was wearing. “Those are your paintings in the basement.”
Mary Ellen rolled her lips between her teeth.
“See? See? You don’t even know about them. Because you didn’t paint them. They’re not yours.”
“Of course they’re mine,” Mary Ellen hissed, standing up and brushing invisible crumbs from her lap. “Of course they’re mine. I just…” She walked to the stairs, went down one step, and stopped. “Forgot.”
16
Mary Ellen hurried the rest of the way downstairs. It took her a couple of tries to find the basement door; there were two closets in that hallway, which was confusing. When she found the right door, she descended into the musty smell and flickering fluorescent light, pausing to lean against the railing at the bottom of the stairs.
Teenagers! What had made Rose turn so hostile? After Mary Ellen had been so thoughtful, so generous with her time and encouragement. She couldn’t believe the way the girl had tossed the journal aside, barely reading the inscription, not even pretending to be grateful. And then to accuse Mary Ellen of lying. What had set her off? She was just like Sydney and Shelby—on hair triggers, all of them! Had Mary Ellen been that way at that age? She honestly couldn’t remember.
She walked to the corner and lifted a sheet from the stack of medium-size canvases that were leaned against the wall. She picked up a painting: a grotesque still life, tampons spilling out of an antique vase, some maxi pads arranged in a fruit bowl. She studied the flat, poorly proportioned objects, the uncertain lighting, the overworked velvet drape.
She picked up another canvas, feeling her heart sink: a child pulling a gun out of a cereal box—his arm oddly bent, one eye higher than the other, the table slightly foreshortened. Another one: a Barbie doll clamped in a vise. Mary Ellen paddled through the stacks, impatiently scanning, searching for something she couldn’t name. Canvas after canvas revealed little more than a churlish contempt for traditional painting and some flippant swipes at contemporary culture—but no sign of Justine besides her meek initials, JMV, painted in one corner.
Mary Ellen backed away from the paintings and sat on the basement steps. It was hard not to feel cheated. Not by the realization that Justine was a terrible painter—that was useful, even touching, assuming Justine cared about something as uncool as technique. But Mary Ellen had been hoping to find something more substantial under that drape. Something to fill out the armature of Justine’s persona, to put a little flesh on the bone.
Mary Ellen could hear Justine scolding her for her childish notions about art. “I’m not interested in your insides,” she’d always said in class. “Self-expression is an elitist practice. I won’t allow you to penetrate me with your point of view.” And Mary Ellen got it—she really did. She’d read all the literature dismantling modernism and its self-centered, white male privilege; she understood the arguments against identity, individualism, authenticity. Reading about these ideas excited her—They were so counterintuitive! So full of bravado!—and when faced with a work of art, she normally reveled in the game of criticality. But now, here, in this flickering basement, she felt only disappointment. She wanted more. Not just from Justine as a person, but from art.
Mary Ellen rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. What was she doing? The whole idea that she could go off to the woods and become an artist was ridiculous. It was the kind of thing people did on reality shows—frumpy housewife turned supermodel! Homeless drug addict turned master chef! The myth of reinvention was etched so deeply into the culture that it resembled the very grain of life. But now Mary Ellen was beginning to see it for what it was: the foolish dreams of the teenage mind, acted out with costumes and scripts and two-dimensional scenery.
She stared glumly at Justine’s swiping brushstrokes. The paintings were too easy—that was what really bothered her. Jokey, tossed-off remarks, like an anonymous comment on the internet. Not that she was in any position to judge; the photos she’d just sent to Justine hadn’t even required conscious thought. Accidental photographs! She’d actually thought they were an artistic breakthrough. She’d actually thought they were good.
What was it her father always said? “Good things come to those who work their asses off.” She smiled, imagining him rolling his eyes at Justine’s pictures, at the very idea of turning one’s back on talent, skill, beauty, truth. He’d probably take the opportunity to bring up the tumultuous career of his beloved John James Audubon, a favorite happy hour topic. He was the real thing, that one. Never let anything get in his way. Did you know rats ate all of his drawings, forcing him to start over? Rats!
Justine, on the other hand, seemed to feel that an artist could be cobbled together by anyone with the right nuts and bolts—the right buzz, connections, contempt for sincerity, demographic disadvantage, friends at BOMB. She was wrong, of course—the proof of that was piled against the basement wall. And yet, for some reason, she seemed determined to apply her formula to Mary Ellen.
Mary Ellen still couldn’t fathom what that reason could be. Her memory of that night on the roof deck was fuzzy, but she knew she’d put the question to Justine at one point. Justine had said she wasn’t in it for any sort of commission; she just wanted to help. And she’d said something about people thinking she was washed up, since she’d been fired from that fancy art school. “Justine never does anything just to be nice.” Hadn’t someone told Mary Ellen that at the party? She was beginning to come up against the hard edge of that truth.
And okay, maybe that was how it worked. If the art world was like any other business, then of course it was about who you knew and how you positioned yourself and what the market was looking for. She couldn’t fault Justine for working the system. But sitting here, looking through her fingers at the garish colors splashed across Justine’s canvases, Mary Ellen began to suspect she’d wandered into a fun house-mirror version of the very career she was trying to escape.
She groaned and rubbed her temples. She couldn’t believe she’d come all the way out here on a fool’s errand. Leaving her job, imperiling her marriage, abandoning her children. Her children! Poor Sydney and Shelby, waiting for a call that never came. She’d been so focused on her own self-serving mentorship—another pointless exercise—that she’d forgotten about her own flesh and blood.
She felt a crushing wave of guilt, spiked with anxiety about what Matt was thinking and saying about her now. Sh
e was a terrible mother; he had every right to think that. What he probably didn’t realize was that she wanted very, very much to do better. She’d made it sound like she didn’t care one way or the other, but she did care, she cared so much, and she wanted him—and the girls—to know that.
Mary Ellen stood up quickly and went upstairs. The living room windows were frantic with fast-falling snow. She crossed the room and looked out at the driveway, but she couldn’t make anything out through the rushing whiteness. “I need to make a phone call,” she said to Rose, who was curled up on the sofa. “I’ve got to dig the car out and go back to town.”
Rose didn’t move, except to draw her eyebrows together. “In this?”
“I have good tires. I just need to get out of that drift. Anyway, if we wait any longer, we’re going to be stuck here forever.”
Rose didn’t say anything. Mary Ellen began pulling on her coat, boots, hat, gloves. “Don’t you want to get out of here? I can take you to the bus station.”
Rose sat up slowly. “I told you. There’s nothing to shovel with.”
Mary Ellen went to the kitchen and began slamming through cabinets. She pulled out saucepan and a ladle and returned to the living room, holding them in the air. “Voilà!”
Rose rolled her eyes and lay back down.
“Okay, thanks a lot,” Mary Ellen said. She pulled her car keys out of her purse and shoved them in her coat pocket, then took a deep breath and plunged into the swirling cold.
It really was snowing quite hard. The wind, which had become ferocious, made it almost impossible to walk in a straight line. Mary Ellen held up the saucepan to shield her face from the stinging flakes. The snow on the ground was deep enough to crumble into the tops of her boots, and she could see that the drift where her car was stuck had been sculpted into a smooth, car-enveloping dune.
She began scraping snow away from the hood and windshield. The ladle did little more than make short, narrow channels, so Mary Ellen tossed it aside and focused on taking larger scoops with the saucepan. The cuffs of her coat soon filled with icy wetness, and wind-hurled snowflakes burned her cheeks. She alternated swiping at the car with the pan and with her left forearm, but as she worked, the snow packed down and became hard, so she cleared less and less with each swipe. She clawed at it with her fingers, but it just jammed up against itself, becoming dense and heavy under her hands.
Her arms were starting to ache. She leaned against the car for a moment, pulling her fur hood around her face. Through the curtains of snow, she could see a figure staggering toward her. It was Rose, hood drawn into a tight O on her face, jean jacket buttoned up over the sweatshirt. There were socks on her hands, and she was carrying two canoe paddles.
“Brilliant!” Mary Ellen cried, but the wind carried her voice away, so she showed her enthusiasm with exaggerated clapping motions. Rose handed her a paddle, and she slid it into the hard-packed snow on the windshield, leaning on the handle until the blade popped up, spraying her and Rose with snow. Rose put her head down and went around to the other side of the car, where she began scraping at the snow around the front tire.
They worked like that for a long time, until finally there was enough snow cleared from the doors and the tailpipe for Mary Ellen to get inside the car and start it up. She pushed open the passenger door and yelled out to Rose, “Get in!”
When Rose shut the door behind her, the silence fell over them like a heavy quilt. Mary Ellen leaned her head back and closed her eyes for a moment, breathing hard, feeling the burn of blood rising to the tips of her ears, her fingers, the edges of her nostrils. She pulled off her gloves and held her fingers in front of the heat vent. She looked over at Rose, who was using her teeth to tug at the wet sock on one hand. The sock was caked with snow, and the girl didn’t seem to have the strength to pull it off. “Oh no,” Mary Ellen said, reaching over and peeling the soggy bags from Rose’s hands, which were bright red and shaking. “You need to go inside and put on some dry clothes. You’re not dressed for this.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you for helping. You shouldn’t have stayed out here this long. My God, you’re really frozen.”
Rose loosened the sweatshirt hood and cleared it away from her face, which looked paler than usual. She shifted suddenly to the side, looking under her rear with alarm. “What the—”
Mary Ellen laughed. “Heated seats.”
“Oh.” Rose looked embarrassed. “I thought I peed myself.”
“It takes a little getting used to.”
“Do you think you can get the car out?”
“I’m going to try.” Mary Ellen got the front and rear windshield wipers going, then put the car in reverse. The tires spun, and the car didn’t move. She put it into first. “Sometimes you have to work it back and forth,” she said. But the car seemed to have no interest in going either direction. She shifted a few more times, varying the pressure on the gas.
“Turn the wheel,” Rose said.
“I don’t think it’ll help.”
“Well, this isn’t working.”
“See?”
“Try it in reverse again.”
“Rose, the wheels are spinning. There’s nothing I can do about it!”
“Don’t gun it so hard! Try it slower!”
Mary Ellen tried a few more times, then slammed the car into Park. “It’s not working, okay?” She put a hand on her cheek and tried to calm her breathing. “I think the middle of the car is up on a pile of snow. The tires are barely touching.”
“Maybe we can jam something under them. Like branches or something.”
Mary Ellen stared at the windshield, which was newly blanketed with snow. “I’m starting to think I can’t drive in this.”
“But you said!”
“It’s late… Look how dark it’s getting. And it’s coming down harder than ever.”
Rose huffed and flopped back in her seat.
“Trust me, I want to get out of here as bad as you do. I need to call my…my…”
“Husband? Daughters?” Rose was staring straight ahead.
Mary Ellen looked at her for a moment, calculating. “Did you go through my things?”
Rose laughed and got out of the car, slamming the door behind her. A swirl of snow blew in and settled into clear droplets on the dashboard. Mary Ellen switched off the engine and pulled her gloves back on, steeling herself for the blustery walk back to the house.
She didn’t necessarily owe Rose an explanation. So she’d changed a few details of her life. Who didn’t do that when they met someone new, someone they probably wouldn’t ever see again? Rose probably wasn’t being 100 percent honest about everything either. The way she’d been acting since Mary Ellen got back from town—so different from the sweet, vulnerable girl she’d first found in the deer blind—was disconcerting. She was probably as full of secrets and lies as any other teenager.
Mary Ellen tugged her hood around her face and left the car’s warm stillness. The light was fading fast, but she could see enough to tell that the car was once again caught in a wave of drifting snow. She picked up one of the canoe paddles and used it to steady herself as she staggered toward the yellow glow of the living room windows.
Once inside the house, she took a hot shower and put on dry clothes, feeling her agitation soften with the stroke of a hairbrush, the comfortable slip of wool socks on the bamboo floor, the lighting of the stove. Exertion followed by relaxation; cold followed by warmth; disappointment followed by a good drink and a bowl of hearty food. The older Mary Ellen got, the more she appreciated this simple sort of ebb and flow; the more she depended on it, really, for any sort of equilibrium.
Rose was nowhere to be found, but when chopped onions hit the hot oil, she appeared on the stairs.
“I’m making chili if you want to watch,” Mary Ellen said.
Rose hesitated, the
n came into the kitchen and leaned her hip against the counter, arms crossed.
“Some people add garlic, but I like it without.” Mary Ellen pushed the onion around the pan, watching it relax. She shook some salt and pepper into the pan. “Chili’s one of those recipes you can change to your own taste and it’ll still be good, you know? Beans, no beans. Some people add cinnamon.”
Rose made a face.
“I know! I don’t do that. Can you open this for me?” She handed Rose a can of tomato paste. “My secret ingredient is beer. I didn’t buy any, though, because they only had Budweiser and Coors. That stuff’s terrible. You might as well just use water.”
“I don’t like the taste of beer anyway,” Rose said, pulling the can opener out of a drawer.
“Well, good. You’re too young for it.” Mary Ellen paused her stirring and put the back of her hand against her mouth.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
Mary Ellen scooped tomato paste into the pan and added some chili powder. The fruity, fiery smell filled the kitchen. “I guess you saw the picture of my girls in my wallet?”
Rose shrugged.
“Did you take anything while you were in there? Money?”
“No! God.”
“Okay, it’s just, I don’t know what to think anymore.” Mary Ellen got the ground meat out of the fridge. “You should try to get organic beef if you can. This was all they had.”
“How old are they?”
“My girls? Seventeen.” She popped a finger through the plastic covering the meat and stripped it away. “They were on a ski trip last week, in Colorado. But they got caught buying beer, so they were sent home.”
“Oh man.”
“I was supposed to call them this morning. But I got caught up in buying you that journal, and I don’t know. I forgot.”
Rose’s face clouded over. “Well, nobody asked you to do that.”
The Runaways Page 17