by Deb Caletti
“Whatever.”
“Shit! I almost forgot. I found a place for us on Craigslist today. It’s been on awhile, probably because it’s by Highway Ninety-Nine. But at least that means we have a shot at it.”
“Okay.”
“One bedroom, but if a girl comes over, you can use it.”
“Does it have a yard?”
“You didn’t say anything about a yard! You said you just wanted a place, fast. I’m the one doing all the looking.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, you want it?”
“Whatever. It’s fine.”
“It’s gotta be more than fine. It’s gotta be ‘write a check for half the deposit.’ ”
“I can’t think about this now. My head is killing me.”
“You wanted fast! Fast is fast, or it’s slow.”
Bam, bam, bam—there’s knocking at the door, and Billy hears laughing. Girl laughing.
“Who’s here?” He’s in no state to see anyone. He hasn’t even put on deodorant.
“I texted a few people. You think I want to spend the whole night with your depressed ass?”
“A few people?” More pounding. On the other side of the door, Quentin shouts, “Open up, ladies.”
Alex sticks his hand down into his pocket and comes up with an Altoid that’s seen better days. He pops it in his mouth and lets them in. Leigh kisses Alex fat on the mouth and Billy looks away. Amy sets a case of beer on Alex’s sister’s table. His sister is a nurse’s aide at a hospital and works late. Sometimes they have to be extra quiet while she sleeps behind her closed bedroom door.
“I told you there’d be no food,” Jenna, a friend of Amy’s, says after slapping shut the fridge door. She was in Billy’s freshman PE class. He had to hold her feet once when they were doing sit-ups. “We should have stopped at Dick’s. I’m starving.”
“Wolf,” Amy says. “Get up off the floor and hug me.”
Billy stays where he is. Amy smacks the back of Billy’s head, changes the channel of the TV, wiping out their game. She puts on some music station. Jenna scrolls through her phone, looking for a place that delivers.
“I don’t want anything unless it’s cheap,” Alex says. “Billy and me are getting a place.”
No one cares. No one even hears him. The doorbell rings. It’s Drew, and Jenna’s friend Shawntel, and some girl he’s never seen before, whose name turns out to be Emma. Food arrives, the kind of discount pizzas that are mostly dough and sauce. Drew starts a game of beer pong with some plastic cups he finds in Alex’s sister’s cupboard and a Ping-Pong ball that appears out of nowhere. God, it’s a weeknight. Don’t these people work? “West Coast rules!” Drew shouts. He says it again, making it a song that comes with a dance. “It’s hot in here! Someone open the door!” He’ll be taking his shirt off any minute, watch.
Amy grabs two beer bottles by their necks, takes Billy’s wrist and pulls him up. “I need to talk to you.”
See? There goes Drew’s shirt, up and over, tied around his head now like an Arabian knight, and there’s his chest with its hard desert dunes. Alex has the door open, and Amy yanks Billy out. Fine. He doesn’t mind. She tugs him down the steps of the tiny house and walks him in reverse until his back is against a big tree.
Somewhere in there, she twisted the caps off the beers, and she hands him his. He takes a few swallows.
“What?” he says. He doesn’t want to look in her face, not really. He watches the leaves of the trees shush against the purple of the moonlit sky.
“What?” she teases. She sets her hips against his. “You tell me what.”
“Why are we out here?”
“We’re out here for an important conversation. One we’ve needed to have for a long, long time.”
Her face is close, close to his. Whatever. More than whatever. Why not? She’s giving herself right to him, and he doesn’t know a single guy, not one, who’d do different. Her breath is warm. She smells like beer and girl shampoo. She’s kissing him, and he isn’t stopping it. Her tongue is in his mouth, and it’s a quick creature of its own that he’s supposed to catch.
Now his mind does it. It says her name. For the first time since he found out, she isn’t Her but Mads. Because this isn’t Mads’s mouth. And those aren’t Mads’s hips—they’re wider and more square, and it suddenly feels all wrong, like getting into someone else’s car, where the seats are adjusted too close to the windshield and the mirrors are off so you can’t see what’ll save your life.
Her tongue is darting, all Whac-A-Mole. He gives her a little shove away.
“Um, Amy.”
“Seriously, Wolfie. Shut up.”
There’s the tongue again, and now all he can think about is the time he let Jasper lick the almost-empty cup of his McDonald’s sundae.
His back and his ass are right up against that tree. So is what’s in his pocket—his wallet, with that map, and the bracelet inside it. Yeah, so judge him for his foolish heart, go ahead—he steps away.
“Amy.” He stands next to the tree, like he’s just taken its side in an argument.
“You can’t tell me you don’t like this, Wolf. I mean, I can feel that you do.”
So what. A hard-on isn’t exactly choosy. A hard-on likes everyone. It doesn’t mean anything.
“I’m just . . .”
“She was with another guy, come on.”
She betrayed him worse than that. She was with his mother after her tortured decision, and he wasn’t even with his mom then. Mads was inside his and his mother’s most private moment, and then she lied about it. She sought him out, wanted him for her own dark reasons, wanted an idea of him. And here is Amy, and who cares, really. Why not, huh? Why not!
“I gotta go,” he says.
“Ugh! You are impossible!”
He is! She’s totally right. Even his own self agrees. Come on! Jesus! His heart is being firm with him, though. It might be broken, but it’s still steady. Stupid hearts. It’s a damn shame sometimes, that true love is so stubborn.
Chapter Twenty-Three
After Billy screeches around that corner, after the shouted No! the house is all stunned silence and the abandoned remnants of breakfast. Mads is shivering. Thomas takes his hand from her shoulder, grabs his keys off the table by the door, and says, “Let’s get out of here. Go get your shoes.”
“Where are we going?” She can barely speak.
“To pick up the truck? Hopefully, it didn’t get towed.”
As Mads passes the kitchen and heads up the stairs, she can tell that Thomas and Claire have already had some kind of important, shorthand conversation. Claire doesn’t look at Mads. She only silently wipes up pancake batter dots and Harrison and Avery’s maple syrup streaks. Even the back of Claire’s head looks disappointed. Mads walks carefully past so nothing else breaks. The flip-flops Mads puts on in her room are guilt-ridden flip-flops, dirty and flat with wrongdoing. She has stopped crying and shaking, and has now moved into some strange disconnect. Her feet don’t seem to belong to her. Her body doesn’t. She creeps down the stairs and out the door, a devastated criminal trying to flee the scene of the crime.
The crime follows. She buckles her seat belt and flinches as Thomas snaps off the radio. Mads’s toenail polish is peachy pink, cheerful, singing the mood of a day long gone. She can’t bear to look at it. Her toes wear a party dress to a funeral, and they’re naïve and embarrassing and should be ashamed of themselves.
Thomas’s profile is stony as a cave wall as he drives. “I don’t know where to start, Mads.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“This whole thing . . . Ryan? Jesus.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“So many lies, Mads. Right to our faces . . . And that boy . . .”
She can’t think about Billy, and the way he looked, and the way he sounded, that No! Her throat gets tight, and her eyes begin to burn with tears again. She pinches her own arm to get herself to stop. It’s not fair to cry any
more about her own losses. Claire and her loyalty deserve tears, not her.
Thomas glances at Mads, and she puts her head down. She doesn’t want to see him, because his face has softened, which is just awful. Thomas has a way of talking to you like you’re two buddies in a bar having a cold one. Like you’re friends.
“I know you’ve just been through a lot back there, but we’ve got to talk about this. The woman, her son, this whole spiral down into their lives . . .”
“Spiral?” He’s right, though. It was a spiral.
“Fixation. I mean . . .” Thomas exhales. Rubs his forehead. He isn’t paying attention. He’s following too close to the car in front of them. Mads doesn’t say anything. She has no idea what to say.
“Claire and I . . . This is our fault. What happened at the lake—it was too much on top of everything else. A trauma like that? We should have insisted you get therapy. Your dad said we should follow your lead. So we were trying to follow your lead.”
“He doesn’t even know me.” She is talking, but she’s not sure how. It’s odd, how her mouth opens and robot words come out.
“You’re right. And you shouldn’t follow the lead of someone who’s had a shock like that. Who’s already going through so much.”
“I wasn’t going through so much.”
“Your mom? The Murray and Murray thing? I know about those legal papers waiting for you. No wonder you’ve been depressed.”
“Lots of people don’t get what they want.”
“Do you hear yourself? God, I’ve got a million things I want to say to you right now. . . . At your age, the world is your oyster.”
“I don’t even like oysters.”
“You should be going to college. You should spend some time being young.”
“I can’t go to college! Why does nobody understand this? Mom needs me.”
“Who is the mother here, you or her? This is exactly why we should have insisted you get help. Your mom, you being depressed already, and then what happened at the lake? God, Mads. It was too much. Too freaking much. Too much for you, too much for Claire and me. We’re over our heads. After this morning, Mads . . .” Thomas waits for a light to change as Mads stares out her window. “We need you to commit to therapy if you want to stay with us.”
It’s a hit after a hit. She feels it in her solar plexus, if that’s what it’s even called. The place where you breathe or don’t breathe. Because it’s an ultimatum. Thomas and Claire are making her choose. And over our heads is large. It means what she’s done is so, so bad. It is bad. She knows that. Billy’s face . . . She will never forget that face as long as she lives. She did that to him. The ogres poke and giggle. What a hilarious, victorious moment for them. A sob rises and escapes.
Thomas hears it. He leans over and takes her hand, steers funny for a second. “Don’t misunderstand, Mads. Even with this Ryan shit. Even with the son, the guy in the Converse. Billy, right? Even with Billy. We are here for you. We will always, always be here for you.”
It’s quiet in the car. Thomas waits. He’s asking her to choose, and so she does.
“I want to go home,” Mads says.
They reach the parking lot at Green Lake. For the last mile, Thomas has only been shaking his head to himself. Now he says, “Come on, Mads, no. Think about this.” He looks at her hard, asking one more time, giving her one more chance.
It seems like a million years have passed since she and Billy stole Casper. Time is strange: A day can bring endless, hollow hours of looking at shoes online, or else, a day can change your life. It can bring momentous events, or the same old twenty-four hours every other day has.
The sight of Thomas’s truck chokes her up. The truck is just so friendly-looking, and it’s still there after all, with its bright headlight eyes and chrome smile. It gets her, you know, the way some people and even some things have a goodness that can hold you in place. They hold you down and urge you to stay, even if you feel go. They are patient anchors, softly repeating what’s most necessary. You’re not alone. This will pass. My chrome will always smile for you.
It makes it even harder to turn to Thomas with her final answer.
“I’m done here.”
• • •
She keeps calling and calling, but gets only the single ring that means Billy’s shut off his phone. Mom picks right up, though. It’s the third time they’ve talked that day.
“Are you sure you want to wait so long to come home? Because I can come right now. I can come right this minute. There’s no need to wait two weeks.”
Mads can’t leave yet; she can’t simply run, because she would never, ever just ditch the people who count on her. The baby who counts on her. Now that she’s decided to go, every minute Mads is away from Ivy, she misses her. She wants to bury her face in Ivy’s silky hair. She wants to watch every arms-up, hurtling-forward step that Ivy’s been taking lately. “I need to give Suzanne some time to replace me,” Mads says.
“You’re probably dying over there.”
Yes. That’s exactly what this slow disappearing is. But she can’t just leave Ivy chained up in that cage. Even if this is Ivy’s chain and Ivy’s cage and even if Ivy will likely spend her whole life feeling the weight of captivity, Mads must do something before she leaves, whether it’s futile or not.
“I am so excited you’re coming home! Your friends are going to be so happy! I saw Sarah in Macy’s. She said you haven’t called her in weeks. She has a new boyfriend. They’ll be thrilled you’re back. And I was thinking, you know, why wait? Why wait until you’re done with the exam to sign the papers? Of course you’ll pass. You’ll have your license in no time. It’s ridiculous that we’ve been waiting. Let’s get this started! I moved up our appointment with Mr. Knightley for the Monday you arrive.”
“Great.”
Mads thinks this is what she says, anyway, because she can barely hear her own voice. It’s like the smallest creak of a floorboard on a listing ship.
“Finally,” her mom says. “Can you believe it? We’ve only been looking forward to this for years.”
Mads remembers something silly, then. Something from The Book: Claudia and Jamie, discussing their homesickness. Their lack of it. Since they ran away, Claudia says, she feels older. Even if she’s already been the oldest child forever.
• • •
It’s all back, the not eating, the not sleeping, the weighty dread, the endless search for online answers. Are You Self-Destructive? Is a Real Estate Career Really for You? Goldberg Depression Screening, number twelve: I feel like a failure. Goldberg Depression Screening, number sixteen: I feel trapped or caught.
Mads finds a picture of Anna Youngwolf Floyd she’s never seen before. After typing in Anna and La Conner, she locates an image of Anna, a volunteer, and a few of the hundreds who turned out for the annual Oyster Run. . . . Anna is about her age, and the world is literally her oyster. At least, she holds one in each hand as she stands next to an outdoor grill, surrounded by a few guys in motorcycle gear.
Spiral, fixation, food that’s gone tasteless, sleep that’s the opposite of bland, all this and the beating heat of summer, too. Mads stops calling Billy, stops leaving messages with pleadings and apologies, because she has no real way of explaining herself, and she’ll be gone in a week’s time, anyway. Harrison is following her around again, and Claire yanks her out of bed one morning, shoves her into the car, and heads to Dr. Bailey’s office. A small amber prescription bottle now sits on the desk in her room, watched over by the photograph of Claire and Thomas and Harrison. It’s like a little beacon, from a lighthouse at the end of a rocky shore, something so the sailors don’t crash. She won’t open it until she’s sure she should be saved. During the day, she click click clicks on the image of that bridge, to the place her own feet would be standing. At night, she dreams of diving into that water, again and again. The body, the cold flesh, bruises. The body is Anna’s, the body is Billy’s, the body is her mother’s, the body belongs to Mads herself.
At work, she has a job to do. She has to hurry, too. There’s not much time left.
She lets Ivy play with dirt and Play-Doh and frosting, because Ivy needs to know that she can make messes. She takes her to the playground so that she can see that there are bullies and brats, but people to trust, too. Mads takes her outside as much as possible, so Ivy can see that the real world awaits. Out in the world is the last place Mads wants to be, but she’ll do it for Ivy.
She tells Ivy everything she knows so far. Trust the boy who has eyes like old stars. Let the rain soak you. Kiss like it’s the last time. She sounds like the bad, annoying stuff printed on decorative pillows, but she doesn’t care.
“I sorted through the resumes,” Mads tells Suzanne.
“I can’t believe there are so many,” Suzanne says. “It’s a babysitting job. That’s the economy for you. Carl says I should be reading them all myself, but I told him it’s the least you can do, leaving on such short notice.”
No, Carl. Shut up, Carl. If Suzanne chooses her replacement, Ivy will get a younger version of Suzanne herself, or else another girl like Mads, helpless and hopeless in this condemned situation, swimming too far out over her head.
“I really like this one,” Mads says. She hands Suzanne the resume as Ivy lets a handful of Cheerios fly like confetti.
“Jesus, Ivy!” Suzanne peruses the paper as Mads picks up the cereal bits. If she does it quietly enough, if she barely moves, Suzanne won’t notice how much she wants this. “God, the woman graduated back in 1980!”
Yes, and she lists her hobbies as dogs and babies. She sounds loving but firm. And she previously stayed with a family until their children were grown.
“She’s old enough to be my mother, let alone Ivy’s,” Suzanne says.
Exactly.
• • •
“Guess what? I have the best news! Mr. Hermann talked with the people at WCC, and you can pop right into their program and finish up. He said he was amazed you did so well, given what happened with that woman. He said he had no idea.”