“She took my car,” she told him as she gestured after Joy, though of course he would have seen this himself. “I can’t let her get away with this. Goddammit.” Knowing that Betsy Hahnemann would lend her her Camry (and knowing too that there’d be a price to pay in terms of gossip, later), she started toward her neighbor’s house, but Martin pulled her back.
“Wait. I have one.”
“What, a car? You do?”
He gestured at an old, big boat of a Plymouth that looked vaguely familiar to her. “But are you sure you want to follow her?” he asked. “I mean, think it through. What are you going to do when you do find her, if you do? Drag her away and pull her into the car, like a little kid having a tantrum?”
She envisioned the scene; he was right. But if Joy would go so far as to take the Mazda without permission (Susanne would not allow herself to think the word “steal”; maybe she had “diverted” the car?), who knew what she might do next?
“Did she say where she was going?” Martin asked.
“She said to the pond, to go skating. But then she just stomped out, without her skates. I can’t believe what she says anymore.” Then another thought occurred to her, replacing anger with fear. “She got arrested last week. You probably heard that, right? The charges were dropped, and she says she didn’t do anything—that she was set up. We didn’t know what to believe.” She remembered the looks she’d observed Joy exchanging with Jason at the nursing home. The looks contained more than flirtation, she realized now; “collusion” would be a better word. “What if she was dealing drugs?” she said to Martin, because it was easier to phrase the question than state the conclusion she’d already come to. “What if she was doing it, and she still is?” She started toward the Plymouth urging him to follow, and when he didn’t, she turned to find out why.
“It might be better if it’s not you.” Martin spoke the words slowly to make sure they would sink in. “Why don’t you let me go? She won’t recognize my car, and I’ll keep a distance. I won’t do anything unless I think she’s in trouble.”
Susanne felt herself falter. Of course, she thought, Joy might flip out all the more if she did see Martin, given what she’d just yelled at her mother about her sleeping with “some black guy.”
But he went on to say, “We’re friends, from the barbecue. Trust me,” and he got into the Fury and turned the key before she could think of a way to stop him. In the next moment, she was glad she hadn’t been able to. He was right; someone needed to keep an eye on Joy, but if Susanne chased her, they’d only be shifting the venue of their confrontation. Making it public instead of confining it to the house.
“Make sure she’s okay, okay?” she called over the high noise of the engine, and Martin waved in—affirmation? Reassurance? Both, or neither? She couldn’t be sure—before he pulled away.
Test Yourself Now!
Everyone knew that Joy had been arrested, and then everyone knew that the charges had been dropped. But no one was quite sure, if you listened to the whispering in the hallways, how the police had known to investigate her, or why she’d been let off the hook.
Harper was surprised along with everyone else when it was announced on the news that police weren’t going to press charges against “the Chilton schoolgirl,” but she understood along with everyone else that it didn’t mean they couldn’t have. You can do the crime without doing the time, she’d overheard in the cafeteria.
Someone—God knew who, or when—had scribbled Jennie Cruz likes pussy on Harper’s desk, and every day when she sat down for English, she put her notebook over the words so she wouldn’t have to read them again. But just knowing they were there set her head grinding, which made it hard for her to concentrate on what went on in class.
When she was young, her mother had read her “The Owl and the Pussycat” every night before bed. Harper could still remember (the memory warming her like the Powerpuff Girls flannel sheets she slept in back then) the loving lilt of her voice as she bent close to Harper’s hair and practically sang, “O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love, what a beautiful Pussy you are, you are, you are! What a beautiful Pussy you are!” It killed Harper that growing up meant she had to learn a new meaning of “pussy,” which spoiled the word for her, and the memory, forever.
At the beginning of the semester she’d tried, secretly before class once, to rub out the comment about Jennie Cruz (who had probably graduated years ago), using wet wipes she brought from home, but it turned out she wasn’t secret enough, because Delaney Stowell noticed and announced, “Betty Crocker has OCD, just like her brother.” Automatically, Joy said, “She does not,” and Harper sent her old best friend a hug with her eyes across the aisle, though Joy didn’t see it because she was looking down, which was all she ever seemed to do anymore.
Of course, the wet wipes didn’t work. A week later she brought in a Sharpie and ran it over the message about Jennie Cruz (though covering it up was not as satisfying as removing it would have been), and Mrs. Carbone sent her to detention, which provided Delaney and her friends with a new thing to mock Harper for.
It was Friday the 13th and cold outside, but Mrs. Carbone shoved open the classroom windows from the top and before she returned to her desk, she leaned her face out to breathe in a couple of lungfuls of the bright, chilly air. Kids exchanged furtive glances. There was a rumor she’d been arrested for DUI and that it involved Keith Nance somehow, but it couldn’t be true because she wouldn’t still be here teaching, would she? And how messed up would it be for the person who tried to help her students affected by their parents’ drinking to be a drunk herself?
Joy sat next to Harper in class because the seating was assigned, but they avoided meeting each other’s eyes. They hadn’t spoken in almost two weeks, since the day after the Halloween party, when Joy showed up at Harper’s house and (Harper was sure) stole her mother’s pills. She’d considered telling Joy she was on to the theft, to let her know she hadn’t gotten away with it, but she hadn’t done so (and probably wouldn’t) because there didn’t seem to be any point: Joy was beyond retrieving as a friend.
After class she went to the library, where she worked for a few minutes on her Othello paper at one of the computers, then logged onto Facebook, something she did multiple times a day because Sandra Sherman, her mother’s friend, tended to post links to Harper’s wall like “Are You Phobic? Test Yourself Now!” and Harper always rushed to hide them as soon as she could. But there’d been no action on her page since the last time she checked, so she logged into Joy’s account using the password SALSA (her own, of course, was CHIP). She’d gotten in the habit of using this method to see what Joy was up to, since they’d grown further apart. Under the message notifications, she found a thread between Joy and Delaney Stowell, exchanged the night before.
Condo at 3:30 today, Joy had written. Last time, I swear.
Dude, Delaney messaged back, you gotta get your fone back so we can text. And you said last time LAST TIME. Not meeting you at La-La or anyplace else.
3:30 or I confess was Joy’s response.
Confess what? Harper wondered.
Why should I believe you its the last time? Delaney had written, to which Joy replied, Don’t need you anymore, other source of $$ came thru.
Then y you harrassing me?
Cuz I can. Also it’s spelled harass. Joy had inserted a smiley face next to the comment, which unsettled Harper almost as much as the messages themselves.
Beeeeyatch, Delaney had written back, and Harper couldn’t tell if it was a teasing remark in return or a genuine insult. But no smiley face accompanied the word. Ok, but not La-La, its burnt out gives me the creeps! 3:30 at pond, last time for real or else. The messages ended there.
At home, her mother’s curtains were drawn, the signal that she didn’t want to be disturbed. Harper told Truman she wanted to go to the pond. “Why?” he said, though she could tell he didn’t really have any interest in the answer.
It was a fair question—one she would
be asking herself for years to come. She’d told herself she wanted to go for Joy’s own good—to help Joy, if she needed it.
But who was she kidding? Even if Joy wanted her help, Delaney would have Tessa and Lin with her. Three against two. Or three against one and a half was more like it, Harper thought.
It would take her years to be able to acknowledge the idea that her real reason had to do with wanting to watch Joy get punished. For her to be able to understand how angry she was at Joy’s betrayal in stealing her mother’s pills.
“I’ll make you moon pies,” she told Truman.
“Double batch,” he stipulated, and when she agreed, he picked up his keys.
As they approached the pond, they saw a group of people gathered on the shore’s edge around the benches you could sit on to change in and out of your skates. Mothers helped their little kids stay upright on their double-runners, escorting them to the ice. “That was us once,” Harper said. Truman said, “That’s still you,” and she slapped his parka arm with her mitten.
To one side of the benches, Joy stood amid a small huddle. Before Harper could get out of the car, her brother squinted ahead through the windshield and added, “Hey, isn’t that your friend the drug dealer?” He pointed at Joy, who stamped her fake UGGs on the ice and hugged herself to stay warm.
“She’s not a drug dealer.” But, of course, Joy was. The words had emerged automatically, as Harper noticed so many of her words did now.
“Whatever,” Truman said again. “Get yourself a ride home.” They both knew this wasn’t going to happen and he would be making the return trip, but he still said it every time.
He sped off, leaving exhaust to blacken the ice beneath his tires. The noise made everyone at the pond look up as Harper approached, hugging herself in an effort to keep warm. Delaney said, “You weren’t invited.” She looked at Joy to confirm that her claim was right, and Joy shook her head slightly: No, I didn’t ask her.
“You don’t have to be invited to come to the pond.” Harper had no idea where she found the nerve to say such a thing—and to Delaney Stowell, no less. “What’s going on?” Her heart knocked at the audacity of her own question.
“Exercise,” Tessa said, earning laughter from the others. Then, just as quickly as they had sought to banish Harper, they all seemed to forget she was there.
“Come on,” Joy said to Delaney. Harper wondered whether she was the only one who could tell that beneath her cold look and the harshness in her voice, Joy was shaking. “Just give it to me already.”
Delaney reached into her pocket and pulled out an envelope. She seemed to be considering whether she had any option other than meeting Joy’s demand. When it appeared that nothing occurred to her, she held the envelope out and Joy grabbed it (moving fast to hide the shaking?) before Delaney could change her mind.
“I meant what I said, though. That’s it.” Delaney leaned close to Joy, and Harper watched their ribbons of exhaled breath mingle in the air between them. “Try again, you’ll be sorry.” Her vehemence came out with drops of spit.
The mothers on the ice, appearing to sense trouble, moved their kids away from the teenagers. A little boy looked at Harper, and she saw fear in the child’s face. It was a moment she would always remember, though every time she tried to describe it to herself, in years to come, the right words failed her.
“Joy,” she said urgently, “let’s go. I’ll call Truman to come and get us.”
“Shut up,” Joy said, not turning to look at her.
“Joy—”
“I said shut up!” Now she did turn, and Harper didn’t even recognize her friend’s face, so grotesque was it in its fury. Delaney and the other girls smirked, Lin shooing her away. Her eyes stinging, Harper backed up, watching them watch her as she retreated from the circle they’d denied her access to. Once she reached the shore, she turned to face the shack and started toward the pay phone at the side of the building, her legs feeling weak from the futility of her trip here—the mission she hadn’t even been able to identify to herself.
She slid a quarter into the phone with trembling fingers as a guy who worked in the shack, the one who creeped her out and smelled like pot, stood in front of the door and tried to light a cigarette in the breeze. Then a black man came out, practically running right into the creep. Before getting into his car the black man smiled at Harper, but she blushed and looked at the ground. What if that was the guy Joy’s mother was having sex with? Immediately she felt ashamed of the thought—wasn’t that the same as believing all black people looked alike?
In the car he made a short phone call on his cell phone, then drove away. As she waited for Truman to answer, Harper cast a look around at the bleak sky without really seeing it. Out on the pond, she saw Joy break free from the other three girls and start sliding across the ice toward the crook in the elbow. Run! Harper felt like calling after her. She had no idea where the impulse to warn Joy came from, and Delaney and Tessa and Lin obviously couldn’t have cared less—they had no inclination to chase or follow, now that whatever transaction they’d come for was complete. Nevertheless: Go, go! she urged her friend silently, feeling vicarious victory in Joy’s escape.
Friday, November 13
What happened to Joy? And did I have a part in it? I must have—we all did. But what, exactly, was mine?
On the eleven o’clock news just now they said that Joy is presumed drowned, but they haven’t retrieved her body. I had to turn the sound down when Susanne came on, her husband behind her, and said she didn’t believe her daughter was under the ice, and could anyone who knew anything please, please contact the police, so they could bring their baby home and put her to bed.
Watching her, I realized I had never seen her cry before. I’d never seen her face twisted in anything like what I just saw. It was nothing like the way I saw her face move in pleasure when we were in bed. Before now I would have made the mistake of thinking the expressions were similar—the features contorting in ecstasy like the ones contorting in grief. I’m ashamed to say that somewhere, my mind was registering this to remember in front of the easel someday.
Is there anything I could have done to prevent it?
Of course, it had occurred to me to tell Susanne about Joy’s visit on Halloween. I knew she would want to know that Joy had shown up at my house and demanded confirmation of our affair. But after that initial inclination, I decided it was really up to Joy to tell her mother; there was no need for me to get involved in the business between mother and daughter. If Susanne and I had still been in touch, of course I would have. But she’d made it clear she didn’t want any contact. I decided to obey another of Grandee’s favorite sayings, and let it lie.
But all this week the grapevine at school’s been buzzing with the news that Susanne Enright’s daughter had been arrested for drug possession, and I realized that Joy was in deeper trouble than I’d understood. After considering, I worked up the nerve yesterday to approach Susanne toward the end of her scheduled office hours, as I used to on the Thursdays we slept together. It amazed me, the difference between how I felt on those days and how I felt now—from absolute pleasure to absolute dread.
After all that, she wasn’t there, and somebody said she’d taken a personal day. Which made sense in light of the arrest.
I knew that if I left a phone message or texted that I wanted to talk to her about Joy, she would respond finally. But I allowed myself to believe that the message would be better delivered in person, so that I’d have an excuse to speak to her face-to-face. My plan was to linger after sculpture studio today, but she told us she had a “killer headache” and left the room before we’d even put away our materials. I couldn’t have caught up with her without drawing attention I knew neither of us would want.
So I drove to her house as I had twice before, in Grandee’s car, both times losing heart before texting or calling to say that I was outside and wondered if she would come sit and talk with me for a minute. My plan today was simple: i
f the Odd Men Out truck was in the driveway, I would leave.
But as it turned out, only the Mazda was parked there, and the garage door was open so I saw that her husband wasn’t home. This time, to alter the pattern that hadn’t worked before, I put my phone away and simply began walking toward the house. Approaching, I heard voices shouting at each other: Susanne and Joy. “That is such bullshit!” Joy screamed at her mother. They were arguing in the kitchen, and hearing them through the garage, I stopped short on the walkway, knowing I was beyond their sight. At first, I couldn’t make out the actual words. But then I heard Joy say “some black guy,” and felt myself flinch physically, as if someone had kicked me in the gut. A few moments later, when Joy got into the Mazda and backed out with a screech, I found myself tempted to hide behind a bush so Susanne wouldn’t see me.
But I didn’t need Violet’s voice in my head to tell me I had no reason to feel guilty, and instead I moved toward Susanne, doing my best not to startle her. She put a hand to her heart when she saw me and for a moment I was afraid she’d scream again, but instead she looked relieved when she realized it was me—grateful, even. Just remembering the expression on her face, now, makes me want to linger on how good it felt, and I wish I could stop there. Especially because all that came after it, in its speed and chaos, is more of an outline than details I can trust myself to fill in.
It must have taken less than a minute for us to decide together that I should be the one to follow Joy, alone instead of with Susanne, to make sure Joy didn’t get into more trouble than she already was. I drove toward Elbow Pond hoping she hadn’t lied to Susanne about where she was going, because she had too much of a head start for me to actually follow. I was relieved when I arrived at the lot in front of the Elbow Room (which I know the kids call “the shack”) and saw the Mazda parked haphazardly in the corner, and I pulled the Fury into a space on the opposite side.
How Will I Know You? Page 25