Now, I was supposed to be paying attention to Jess, listening to her talk about her dead sister for the first time. That’s what a friend does, a friend who got the furniture the aunt who was moving gave to Jess. Jess bought a new dresser from a furniture store in Oak Lawn and had it delivered. I didn’t have to confess straight out, how no way could I buy even one stick of furniture. So now I asked, “How’s your mom getting crazier?”
Jess said, “She slapped a lock on my sister’s bedroom door and she’s the only one with the key, so no one else can go inside.”
That was another name Jess didn’t say: Linda. I remembered from high school Spanish that the word linda meant “pretty.” Linda looked pretty in the newspaper photograph, but no prettier than the average pretty girl. I didn’t like staring at her picture, knowing she was dead. Like spying. But I kept the clippings and brought them to school with me. I don’t know why.
“That’s crazy,” I agreed.
“She sleeps in the guest room,” Jess said. “Locked door there, too.”
“Also crazy,” I said.
“No way am I going back to that house,” Jess said. “No way. This is my grand escape.”
Without the fiancé, she would have to pay closer attention to getting a job. She wanted to work in public relations or something with the media. One of those jobs where they want people with a lot of energy. I imagined a calmer sort of job for myself. A lot of students from our school ended up in entry-level assistant jobs at one of the big Chicago ad agencies, because the founder of the agency graduated from here. A building was named after him. I wanted to end up there, though people complained it was a terrible time for getting jobs. I could type fifty words a minute. I could make coffee. I didn’t have a great need to do more. I just wanted a place to show up every day and a paycheck. I wanted files with typed labels in alphabetical order. I wanted an office supply cabinet filled with Wite-Out and boxes of Bic pens in blue and black ink. An enormous Xerox machine spitting out copy after copy, that fluttery whisper of paper moving across mornings and afternoons. I wanted, really, never to go back to Iowa. That was what I wanted. Like Jess: No way am I ever going back to that house. Different but the same, longing always for more than what I had. I liked that we suddenly had this in common.
“What’s your mom do in that bedroom?” I said. Abruptly my eyes snapped into focus—a tree again, a tree—and I spun around. Jess had popped open several of the capsules and was pouring white powder into a tiny, loose pyramid. She set her fingertip at the pointy part and pressed lightly, smushing down, then started re-mounding the powder.
“You’d think you’d be able to see the poison,” she said.
“Maybe you can,” I said. “Maybe these are fine. Maybe we won’t die if we take them for our headaches.”
Jess said, “It was my sister.”
“Linda,” I said, because it was weird not to say people’s names. That’s what names were for, to use them when people were real, right? To say “Linda” and to think of that pretty girl in the newspaper clipping. Also, maybe I wanted to shake Jess up, knock her concentration. Also, I don’t know why, but Jess made me nervous sometimes.
“The razor blade in the Snickers bar,” Jess said. “She did it herself. She told me so this summer, like a week before driving to that concert. Why would—”
I sat down immediately. The chair squeaked. It was going to be the chair that drove me crazy the whole year, squeaking and squealing, rickety besides, but it would be disruptive to pop out of this chair and jump into another. “No,” I said. “That can’t be.”
Jess dribbled more powder into her growing pile. It looked like cocaine, which I had done a couple of times without liking it. It was supposed to be glamorous, probably because it cost so much money. Jess said, “Easy to sneak a razor blade out of some old paint scraper in the garage. If you pulled the wrapper carefully enough, you could re-stick the edges together.”
“Anyone can buy razor blades from the drugstore,” I said. “That’s just a normal thing.”
“Like Tylenol.” Jess raised the red half of an empty capsule. “Looks like plastic. I can’t believe it dissolves in your stomach.” She smiled. “Remember, my sister was the one driving,” she said. “Which is also normal, right?”
“No,” I said again, such a stupid word, so defenseless.
Jess stuck out her tongue and touched the open edge of the capsule to it. “Less see if it melz,” she garbled.
I imagined taking Jess’s hand, guiding it down to the kitchen table, setting it flat, and tracing the white line of her missing diamond ring with my own finger. I imagined saying some word that was smarter and stronger than “no,” some word that might be meaningful. I imagined that English professor sitting at night in a library somewhere with a thousand scribbled index cards, reading about that poet, reciting lines to herself until she cried. I imagined a day when I might be perched on an office chair at a cool, clean desk with an in-basket and a telephone with blinking lights and buttons that I knew how to operate, when I might simply pick up the phone and say something easy like “Mr. Smith’s office,” pen poised to jot down a number. I imagined how many asses had sat in this squeaky chair, how many conversations had happened around this kitchen table, how many secrets there were in the world, in this room, in my head.
That pile of powder on the table could be all poison, I thought, all contaminated.
I grabbed one of the open capsules and placed it on my own tongue. “Racth ya,” I said. “Go.” It felt impossibly light, tasted like nothing. My heart pounded loudly, suddenly fast.
Jess laughed, and I laughed, both of us keeping careful balance of the empty capsules on our tongues. A regular, ordinary laugh, as if I were any normal friend, as if we were simply girls who randomly met when we were eighteen. As if the world weren’t changing, now or ever; as if I hadn’t done those things with her fiancé, with Tommy, all those times; as if I wouldn’t again tonight or any night if he showed up at the library looking for me, wanting me. As if something could stop me.
Strategies for Survival #8: Mental Health
(spring, freshman year)
Nothing would get me inside the student mental health center. But sometimes I walked by the brick Georgian—which had been a family’s house before the university sprawled its way onto Orrington Avenue, snapping up buildings for quirky departments like geography and African studies—and its University Counseling and Social Services, which was called UCSS but that we rearranged to CUSS, or maybe only Jess and I did that, one more word for our private vocabulary. Sometimes when I walked by, I stopped across the street, maybe to tie my shoe, maybe to admire the prickly holly planted in front, maybe to stare at the people trudging up the brick walkway on the lifeless gray day, backpacks hanging limply off one shoulder. What was wrong with them, I always wondered, that they couldn’t fix themselves? What was wrong with me? What had they done? Or was it what hadn’t they done?
JEWELS
(fall, junior year)
“I can’t do anything right.” It was Jess’s mother at the front door, around dinnertime the next day, when the Tylenol scare filled the paper and the TV. Jess wasn’t home, and I was the one opening the door, telling her Jess would be back around ten, though that was an optimistic guess. I had been trying to write a paper that didn’t want to be written. Most of my papers were like that until about midnight, when suddenly they would get done in a mad clatter of typewriter keys, but it wasn’t a schedule that felt normal, so I resisted it, thinking each paper might be the one that I could write in a state of calm. I had typed my name at the top of the piece of paper. That’s how far I had gotten; that’s how well this paper was going. Ten years from now I wouldn’t remember the paper or the book the paper was about.
Jess’s mother stood on the porch, fingers twisting the single strand of pearls around her neck, as if it were a rosary, though Jess had said that her mother didn’t trust Catholics even though Jess’s father once was one, so I didn’t mentio
n the comparison. Her purse was unzipped, one strap dangling, flapping open so I could see into it; instead of a clutter of makeup and receipts and a billfold, there were several small rubber-banded white boxes, like the kind for jewelry. It seemed like a peculiar thing to cart around, and I wondered if this was what always was inside her purse or if this was something new. Jess claimed she was going crazy.
“You could come in and wait for her,” I suggested, tacking on, “I mean, if you want,” in a way that implied she shouldn’t really want to. Jess would flee if she spotted her mom’s silver Cressida parked on the street outside.
She stepped through the door, her face making that little crinkle it did when she was working to pretend she wasn’t uncomfortable. She liked me a lot, but she was suspicious of this apartment. On move-in day, there had been a lecture about extension cords and electrical outlets; a warning about candles burning in empty rooms; and much concern that the refrigerator wasn’t cold enough, that the thermostat was off. Jess had ignored it all, but I pressed the back of my hand against damp milk cartons, as if gauging a fever. Now, I remembered the pile of white Tylenol powder that neither Jess nor I had wiped off the table. She would assume her daughter was a cokehead. Probably better than thinking we were messing around with Tylenol. Seven people were dead. No one knew how much poison was out there, who was doing such a thing. It seemed like it had to be someone trying to kill one person specifically and cover it up, maybe to get insurance money, like in a TV lawyer show, or maybe it was a disgruntled employee. There had to be an explanation. A reason. A plan. Someone would get caught in the next day or two, everyone said, because who would do this thing, kill random people with headaches? A twelve-year-old girl was dead. A little girl.
“Let’s sit in the living room,” I said, though when Jess’s mother had been here before she sat at the table. She told us how growing up she was the youngest cousin, so she spent hours sitting in the kitchen while her mother and aunts played cards after the housework was done. Jess was bored with stories from before she was born, and these were boring stories, but I pretended to enjoy listening to them when her mom got on that track. I headed her off before she could reach the kitchen table, scooping a clutter of Jess’s fashion magazines from the sofa, and she sat down, balancing on the edge. Her back stayed as straight as a pool cue.
I perched on the arm of the saggy recliner, working to get my back as straight as hers, but that hurt so I relaxed into a slump, into my usual approximation of a parenthesis. Her pearls made me wish I wasn’t wearing sweatpants bunched up to my knees. I tugged them down but was reminded why I’d slid them up: splotches of grease from when they snagged in a bike chain while riding along the lake with some boy. I didn’t like bikes but the boy did. She could probably see the Rorschach stain even after I crossed my legs.
“Oh!” I said. “Would you like some water? Or I think there’s Tab.”
She said, “Where is Jess?”
“At the library,” I said, which distracted me into wondering about Tommy, Jess’s ex-fiancé, so I pushed the lie more forcefully. “There are readings on reserve. You know how it is.”
“Not really,” she said. “I didn’t get to go to college.”
I guess I’d known that, but it seemed like an accusation now, like she wanted to fight me because I knew “readings on reserve” and she didn’t. “It’s when professors—”
“No one thought I should waste my time with school,” she said. “Get married and have babies was all anyone expected from me. All I expected from myself.” Her back was so straight. Watching its perfect straightness strained my eyes. I didn’t want to hear her mention Linda. I sensed she was about to, just as I suddenly sensed those little boxes in her purse had to do with Linda. I thought of that locked-up room no one but her was allowed in, Linda’s bedroom. Jess always complained to me that Linda was the favorite, that Linda got away with anything. I didn’t know if this was true, but Jess was absolutely certain.
“I’ll get some Tab,” I said, jumping up, heading to the kitchen. I was afraid she might follow me, but luckily no. I opened the refrigerator, which contained a sweaty container of yogurt that I instinctively rested my hand against, half a loaf of bread, two curling pieces of leftover pizza on a plate, and no Tab. To save money I drank water, which I claimed to love, though Jess told me I should drink or eat anything she bought. The problem was she often forgot to go shopping. Plus she was the one with the car, and Tab was heavy.
“Water’s fine,” her mother said, as if reading my mind. “No ice,” which was also lucky since there were only two cubes in the tray and I wanted them. I took as long as possible, but it wasn’t hard putting together two glasses of water, even with refilling the ice tray.
I set the glasses on the coffee table, then remembered we owned coasters, so I found them and moved the glasses onto the cork coasters. She said, “I have those same coasters.” She seemed amused.
“I bet maybe Jess took them from your house,” I said.
“I never especially liked them, so good.”
There was a silence. I tried to imagine owning enough things that you might forget what you owned. What a luxury. I drank my water and the ice clinked noisily, or so it seemed. She barely moved. Her lack of movement was making me itchy, itchy and crazy and wanting to scream. None of that made sense.
She said, “This thing with the Tylenol has me spooked.”
“I know.”
“You forget that anything can happen, anywhere, even to a nice family.”
“I know.”
“That’s why”—and, yes, here came the swoop toward the purse, as she reached in and drew out two white boxes—“I want to leave these here, with you.” She set the boxes on the table. Though they were each only as wide as a deck of cards, they sounded heavy, or heavier than jewelry anyway, with a slight rattle. She pulled out more until there were eight altogether, stacked up in two columns of four. The rubber bands pressing around the lids looked off bundles of asparagus or other produce. Funny that someone who owned so many things that she didn’t miss a coaster set would squirrel away used rubber bands.
“You mean leave with me to give Jess,” I corrected.
“With you,” she said. “Not Jessica.”
I half smiled, maybe at the official name. Like we knew different people.
Another silence. I honestly wanted to pick up the boxes—whatever they were—and carry them into my room and drop them into a drawer and never look at them again until she needed them back, but I knew that she expected me to ask what was inside. It was unavoidable. She was going to tell me.
Still, I didn’t ask. We both stared at the little boxes, and when I glanced up, her eyes looked so glossy and sad that I finally said, “What are these?”
She pounced on my question: “Every day since Linda died, I walk to the park, to the pond she liked as a little girl. Every day I find a rock or two and bring them home. These are those rocks.”
“Wow,” I said.
“I can’t have them with me or look at them anymore,” she said. “There are too many.”
“Well, could you—”
“Don’t tell me to throw them away.” Her voice was as sharp as her back was straight.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I don’t know what I had been about to say, but it wasn’t to throw them away. “I’ll take care of them for you.” I imagined my life ahead, these boxes cluttering the bottom of a drawer or stuck in the back of the closet or packed into a moving van.
Maybe she wanted me to ask why she was giving them to me and not to Jess, but, actually, when I looked into her eyes—blue, like Jess’s eyes, only a lesser, paler blue—I didn’t care why. I just was happy suddenly, and I immediately had to look away because being even a little happy right now seemed wrong.
Then she said, “You have a sister.”
I nodded.
“Jess and Linda weren’t particularly close.” She sighed so fast I almost missed it.
I nodded again.
<
br /> “But there was deep love between them,” she said.
Another nod. I could do this if all I had to do was bob my head. A layer of sweat thickened behind my knees.
“Your sister is also younger, right?” she asked. “You and Jess are both the older sister?”
“She’s four years older,” I lied. “She lives in Arizona, where she’s working as a park ranger”—something I knew nothing about. Not a smart lie. A stupid lie. A stupid, pointless lie. I squeezed my fingernails hard and deep into the heels of my hands.
A line of concern dug into her forehead. “Oh, your mother must worry about her, out there with all the rattlesnakes and, well, a job like that.”
I smiled. “My sister is tough as nails. I’ve never seen her cry once.” I kept smiling. I could smile and smile. This part about not crying was true, I realized, and suddenly it was harder to smile.
Jess’s mom blinked several times and then pointed to the boxes. “I might want them back someday,” she said.
“I know. Just say so.”
“Jess would throw them away,” she said.
“Maybe not.” Of course she would. She would make fun of her mother to me, scattering sentences with the word “crazy” and bringing up how Linda was the favorite. Then she’d spill the rocks into a metal garbage can outside, where they’d clunk and rattle, and over the course of the week, we’d drop in sloppy trash bags that smelled of banana peels. By garbage day, she would have forgotten the rocks entirely. Only I would imagine them being tipped into the truck, being driven away with the other junk.
Silver Girl Page 3