Mary steals a glance out the window, sees Nate leaning against an apple tree, chatting with a group of guys. Jordan lopes in and joins them.
hatehatehate
She sees them talking, Jordan gesturing with his gangly arms. She even hears him laugh at something, a joke of his own making. Nate responds angrily, pushing him away with one hand, causing Jordan to stumble backward, almost losing his footing. Jordan yells something unintelligible, flips him the finger, then turns to head back to the bus. With some remote pleasure, she watches as Nate looks around, picks up a fallen apple, and hurls it expertly at the back of Jordan’s head, where it explodes into rust-colored pulp.
CHAPTER
Seventeen
In the half-dark of the school’s sickroom, Mary lies in a fetal position on a vinyl-covered bed, a thin blanket pulled up around her. Mrs. Chandrakar, in a violet dress with a wide belt, gently sits down beside her.
“Mary? It’s Nan. Mrs. Chandrakar. How are you doing?”
Mary does not answer. She does her best to stare right through the guidance counselor, to think of nothing, so that she doesn’t have to think of the Arboretum and what happened there.
“Do you want to talk about what happened on the field trip?”
No
Yes
No
Yes
No
NO
Mary shakes her head slightly.
“Is it okay if I stay here for a bit? You don’t have to say anything right now if you don’t want to.”
No
Yes
“So, is it okay? I can stay with you?”
Yes
Mary nods, the slightest of motions.
“Good. Mary, I know something is wrong. I want to help you. I promise that you’ll feel better after you talk about it. Maybe not right away, but eventually you will. Talking about a problem is the first step toward fixing it.”
Maybe I …
NO
NO
NO
“Can you tell me anything about what happened? You were with another student, Nathaniel. Is he someone special to you?”
Yes
“… Did he hurt you?”
No, he kissed me
Yes, he kissed me
“Mary, you’re arguing with yourself, I can tell. I’ve seen it enough times to know. You can talk to me.” The counselor waits for a moment but gets no reply. “Okay, Mary, we have an appointment next week. Maybe you’ll feel more like talking then. I’ll leave you so you can rest.”
No
As Nan begins to rise, Mary slides an arm out from under the blanket, touching her fingertips to Mrs. Chandrakar’s hand. Seeing the gesture, the counselor places her hand, light brown with golden rings, over Mary’s. “Or I could stay and we’ll just enjoy the quiet. Would that be good?”
Yes
Mary nods her head and closes her eyes.
S
Mary walks home in a daze, ignoring her surroundings, not seeing the people or cars that pass her by. Her brown suede coat weighs heavily on her, even though the coming of autumn has begun to cool the air.
She feels hollow, a shell with nothing but darkness within.
You can’t have anyone
Mary turns the key to the front door of her apartment building and drags herself up the stairs. She wants more than anything to go to bed. She wants to sleep and sleep and sleep and never wake up again until her problems are gone.
Maybe never wake up at all
The instant she unlocks the apartment door and walks inside, she knows something is wrong.
Please, I can’t take one more thing
The lighting seems strange. The small living room window lets in a little of the afternoon sun, but most of the apartment is in shade, with all of the lights off. Her bedroom door is ajar, with a fine line of sunlight showing along its edges.
“Mom?” There is no answer but Mary can hear a shuffling, snuffling sound coming from her own room. “Mom, are you there?” She crosses the living room like a sleepwalker, her left hand outstretched, reaching for the slightly opened door. Pushing it open, she sees her mother sitting slouched on the edge of the bed. She’s wearing her blue housecoat, her face swollen and red from crying. Thrown open on Mary’s bed is her hidden box, its treasure trove of memories exposed, removed, destroyed. The photographs are torn apart and scattered. Her record albums have been smashed into fragments, the pieces like jagged, black knives. The harsh light overhead illuminates the terrible scene, glinting brightly from the glossy and broken remnants of her father. Shadows tremble around her mother’s sobbing form.
Mary’s mother turns toward her. “How could you do this to me?”
All gone
It’s all gone
He’s all gone
She’s taken him away, again
“Mom …”
“Don’t answer! I don’t want to hear it.” Her mother’s voice is worn down from crying.
“I just wanted to keep something to remember Daddy by. Please, Mom …”
“I get a call from some lady at your school, telling me that my little girl is depressed, that she might be suicidal and that I should look around your room for some kind of sign. And I find this.” She gestures to the pile at her feet. “Record collecting! God, you must have laughed when you got that one over on me. I did everything for you. EVERYTHING. And what has he done? Nothing! He left us alone.” Sadness and anger burn inside Mary’s chest. “Oh, Posey, you were always so good. How could we end up like this? Why didn’t you tell me something was wrong? Haven’t I always been there for you? I’ve tried so hard. Please, Posey, come sit here with me …” She pats the bed beside her, gesturing for Mary to join her.
Mary feels a boiling inside her, a lifetime of volcanic emotions erupting toward the surface. “How could I do this to YOU? All I wanted was something to remember him by and you wouldn’t even let me have that one small thing! Look what you’ve done! Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?!”
The expression on her mother’s face changes from sadness and pity to disgust and rage. “You selfish brat! God, if you only knew what that man has done to this family!”
“How can I?” Mary screams, too angry to cry. “I don’t know because you won’t tell me!”
“I can’t! It’s just too complicated …”
“Explain it to me! I’m not a little kid anymore! Tell me what happened to Daddy!”
“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy …” Her mother’s face contorts horribly with the words. “You think I don’t know?! You think I don’t know how much you want him to come back and save you from your evil mother?!!”
“Mom …”
“You shut up and listen to me! You’ve built him up into this white knight who’s going to ride in and make everything better for you, but let me tell you, I know all too well that he’s just a man. He’s flawed and sick and selfish, and he put himself before his family and then left us here to fend for ourselves. Now look at us! We’re forced to live in this shithole of an apartment, and I have to work at this job I hate, and when I come home, you’re sad all the time because you think I’m such a monster. You don’t understand anything! We can’t move on until we put that bastard behind us!” Mary has never heard her mother speak of her father with so much desperate hate.
“He was nice to me! I don’t want to move on!”
“You have no idea what he was really like!”
“Yes, I do. He was just like me!”
And I’m just like him
“What are talking about!? You’re nothing like him! You can barely even remember him!”
“Yes, I can!”
And now you’ve taken away my last few pieces
“You think I’m keeping some big secret about why he left, but there is no reason! First, he stopped talking, then he stopped coming home, and then, one day, he was gone. And now, even his money’s dried up.”
“Gone where?”
“I told you, I don’t know!”
<
br /> “Yes, you do. You’re not telling me!”
“No, I don’t! Your father was sick in the head. Something was wrong with him.”
Like me
“So don’t think you’re like him because you’re not.”
Mary loses the will to argue any longer. She shuts down, her last remaining reserves of energy emptied.
It’s all gone
All of Daddy’s things
The only thing of his left is me, the last memento
It is with this thought that a terrible realization settles upon her. This dawning knowledge takes form like a cloth thrown over a table – at first, flowing and shapeless, then, coming to rest, revealing the contours of what lies beneath. It all makes sense. She can see that now, and the knowledge burns away everything inside, leaving her utterly emptied.
With sad certainty, she says, “You were telling the truth. You can’t be happy until everything of Daddy’s is gone.”
“You understand?” Her mother says, wiping away tears. Again, she pats the side of the bed. “Come here, Posey. I’m so tired. I’m sorry I broke all your records. I was just so angry.”
“That’s okay, Mom. You need to get rid of everything that reminds you of him.”
This is the end of it
“That’s right, Sweetie. I’m so happy you understand.” She reaches out to Mary, who does not take her hand.
“But you can’t do it.”
Her mother stares at her, taking a moment to find her voice. “What are you talking about?”
You can’t come back from this, you know
I know
“There’s one thing that you can never get rid of, one last thing of his. I think it reminds you of him all the time. Until it’s gone, you won’t ever be happy. It’s me. The thing is me.”
Her mother’s face collapses. “Oh, no, no, no, oh, Mary, that’s not what I meant at all. I never want to lose you. I’m just so worried about you …”
Mary turns and heads out of the room.
Her mother calls to her, “MARY! COME BACK!!!”
Mary stops by the door, wondering if she should put her coat on if she’s planning on leaving for good. With quiet detachment, she realizes that, no, she never took it off. Without looking back, she closes the door behind her and heads down the stairs.
CHAPTER
Eighteen
Adrenaline keeps her moving. She travels quickly, avoiding the main roads, following the twisting side streets that lead down the hill.
Be invisible
With no specific idea of where she is going, or what she will do next, Mary rushes blindly ahead, half-running, half-walking. As she hurries forward, the scenario in her bedroom replays over and over again: her mother, the torn photos, the shattered albums. And yet, despite it all, she feels a strange sense of relief, as if some poison was flushed from her body along with the words she spoke.
That’s because it’s the truth. I had to say it
As her initial rush begins to cool and exhaustion settles in, she slows her pace. Soon she finds herself walking by the old houses along the river. The late afternoon sun settles down on the brick and stone, lighting up the water and the turning autumn leaves.
Picture perfect postcard
Her feet take her to the footbridge. She walks up to its highest point but does not turn to take in the view. Instead, she simply continues on, striding down the far side.
Crossing the road on the far side of the bridge, Mary begins winding her way through the streets and buildings of downtown, traveling up and down stairs, over guardrails, going wherever instinct and chance direct her. Arriving in the heart of downtown, she marches straight through small clusters of people, shoving them aside, paying no mind to anyone or anything but her own racing thoughts.
Get away
Get away from Mom
Find Daddy
Get away from Daddy
Get away from the shadows
When she approaches the place where she first met Kristyn and Cammy, she looks around, hoping to see them, knowing that it’s unlikely. She wishes she had thought to bring their phone numbers. She still doesn’t even know their last names.
Before she’s even aware of it, Mary has crossed through the downtown and now walks on the empty sidewalk of a dusty road busy with traffic. Turned around by her travels, she realizes that she may actually be walking toward her home rather than away from it. She stops and quickly reverses direction.
You look like a crazy person
She has never fought with her mother like this before, never left home without permission.
I can’t go home now, maybe not ever
Yes I could, in a little while
What do I do until then?
I should just leave, find Daddy, find out if he really was crazy. I could hitchhike. But you’re not supposed to do that. I could catch a bus out of town, but I don’t have any money. Where would I go? Maybe I could check into a mental hospital; at least there I’d get food and a place to sleep, and if I really am crazy, then maybe they can help me.
But I’m NOT crazy
Anyway, they would just call Mom. But they couldn’t call her if they didn’t know who I was … I could not speak, pretend to be mute. But they’d figure it out, eventually. They’d call the police. And who knows what would happen in a place like that? Drugs that make you dumb, and shock therapy and all that. And what happens when the doctors or nurses or whoever see my shadows in the night?
If the shadows exist at all
Maybe hitchhiking wouldn’t be so bad …
These thoughts tumble through her troubled mind, stumbling one over the other, circling back again and again.
I’m so stupid
She continues to walk and, after a time, returning home begins to seem more and more like a possibility.
Maybe it will even be good. Or better. Maybe now, Mom and I can really talk about stuff, really figure some things out. But not yet. And I can’t stay on the streets for too much longer, either. I’m going to get hungry, and it’ll be nighttime in a few hours.
She crams her hands into her coat pockets. She pulls out a small, stiff piece of paper – one of Mrs. Chandrakar’s business cards.
She must have slipped it into my coat in the sick room. “Call me anytime,” she said ... I guess I could call her. She seems nice
And maybe they’d put me in the crazy house
Maybe she’d believe me, even take me home for a while. I could live with her and her husband. He looked friendly. They’ve got two teenage boys, though. That would be awful. Maybe I could just stay out of their way? And maybe she can help me find out more about what happened to Daddy. I don’t even have enough money to use a pay phone. I wonder if the phone company would put the call through for free if I said it was an emergency. Or I could just ask someone for a quarter. I wonder where there’s a pay phone. Do they even have pay phones anymore?
She looks around, feeling lost in all possible ways. She has a rough idea of where she is, but she’s never walked this far before. She knows she saw a phone somewhere.
Think …
She had walked by a phone on her way downtown once or twice.
What bridge did I come over?
She looks around for some sign to guide her.
Think!
I was walking by …
The bus station
She quickly gets her bearings and begins walking up a side street, ready to make the call. As she walks, her mind turns to the father she remembers, kind, gentle, and quiet.
There wasn’t anything wrong with his mind
Maybe you were too young to notice
Maybe he wasn’t perfect, but at least he could help me, listen to me, answer my questions
Flashes of memory play out in her mind. She is sitting in her father’s lap as he holds up a picture book, a story about a bear in a jacket and patterned pants.
Did he pass the shadows on to me?
Walking in long grass, her father
in front her. He’s wearing gray trousers and calling to her to catch up.
Is that why he left?
She is at a carnival of some kind, riding on her father’s shoulders, sitting on top of the world, her fingers in his hair. She reaches down and lifts up his glasses. He says something to her and then reaches up to take his glasses back.
Did Mom make him leave because she was mad at him for passing his curse on to me?
As she walks down the curving tree-lined street, an approaching car, the only one to be seen, begins to slow down as it approaches her. The driver’s window is open and the long, laughing face of Jordan leers out of it.
God, no …
“Hey!” he calls out.
Not now
“Hey, pussy, pussy!” His laughter is echoed by the small group of boys who are with him. He glares at her and says, “Tell your boyfriend I said ‘Hi.’”
Mary looks at the ground, furious at this latest indignity.
Jordan peels away, his tires screeching on the pavement. Behind her, she can hear the car do a squealing U-turn.
She gathers all of her anger
At Jordan
At mom
At school
At my teachers
At myself
At Daddy
At Daddy?
and uses it to imagine her shadows, not as a torment to herself, but as something powerful that can be bent to her will. She issues a silent mental command and the shadows obey. Within her mind, they gather and shift, swiftly coalescing, taking the form of a colossal black cat. She can picture it in the middle of the road, its tail swaying back and forth with dark menace, a silhouetted sphinx blocking the passage of Jordan’s car.
Get away
She runs blindly ahead and, suddenly, there is a whine of brakes, the scraping of metal on concrete, followed by a sharp thud, and then a terrible silence. She turns to see that Jordan’s car has mounted the curb and struck a tree. The driver’s side door opens and Jordan lurches out, shaken and unsteady. He looks at her in shock and anger and disbelief.
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