And Again

by Jessica Chiarella

  I gaze up at the panel built into the hallway ceiling and then grip the cord that hangs from it and pull. The stairs unfurl to the floor in front of me, and the space exhales a smell of dust and wood, the smell of the innards of a house, of the space between walls. I climb up into the attic, and the light filtering through its cloudy little window is all I have to see by. I wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, watching the dust spin through the strands of light around me. I never liked the attic. I only came up here when there was a clothing drive going on, to sift through Katie’s old baby things and donate what she didn’t fit anymore. I wonder if Jack’s box of baby clothes is still up here, since I never had the chance to sort through it.

  I find that I like the attic much more now, now that I’ve become accustomed to stillness and quiet and solitude. The rest of the house seems overrun with the artifacts of daily life; there is always a toy or half-finished art project or article of clothing to smudge or sit on or trip over. The noise of my children is jarring, so different from the babbling and screams of babies, but an ever-shifting din of voices and video games and singing cartoons. This space, by contrast, feels forgotten. I can take a full breath here.

  There are many more boxes crowding the floor than I remember, and I hunch to avoid low-hanging rafters as I wind my way through them. None of them are labeled. Tom was never much for organizing, after all. He was much more likely to shove something out of his field of vision and then forget about it. The thought stings a bit.

  I choose boxes at random and pry them open. There’s a box of Tom’s grandmother’s china, the pattern that’s so flowery it reminds me of a frosted supermarket cake; the china that Tom hates, though he still can’t bring himself to get rid of it. Tom has always been like that, sentimental. I’d begged him to throw the damn dishes away when we first moved in together, because his grandmother had terrible taste and besides that she’d been dead for ten years already—Christ, almost twenty now—and they would never be put to any use ever again. But no, Tom held on to them, physically even, the battered box tight against his chest to keep me from taking it to the Dumpster. Now I pull away wadded newspaper, glancing at the headline crumpled within, which is something about the end of the Cold War, and discover that the china isn’t nearly as dreadful as I remember. I might even like it, a little, up here among the forgotten things. But it is not what I’m looking for, so I fold the soft cardboard of the lid back into place and move on.

  It takes me three more tries—boxes containing a plastic badminton set with a net so tangled it resembles a bird’s nest, musty sheets, and an inflatable mattress that’s so old its rubber is beginning to flake—before I hit on the box that must be mine. On top is a raggedy old shawl I knitted while I was in college, the one I’d sling over my bed frame to wrap around me when my apartment was particularly drafty. It doesn’t strike me as something that holds much significance. But I try to imagine it through Tom’s eyes. I wonder how many times I’d wrapped myself in it to venture out of the warm cocoon of our bed, springing to the bathroom and back, wearing nothing but socks.

  And it hits me: these are not things he kept in anticipation of my return. These are things he kept to remember me by. There’s the journal I kept during our honeymoon in Hawaii, which quickly became nothing more than an inventory of what we ate each day instead of an actual travel log. My little carved wood jewelry box, which I open to find is still a jumble of chains and beads and bent bobby pins. I hunt through the mess with a fingertip and discover the piece of sea glass Tom found during a camping trip on Lake Superior one summer, a hazy shade of emerald green, probably a piece of a discarded wine bottle worn smooth and edgeless by the press of water and sand. It’s still there, still green and like silk to the touch, and it makes me think of those chilly mornings, the mist rising up off the lake, before the summer sun climbed high enough to burn away the moisture from the air. There’s my hospital bracelet from when I had Katie, which I was able to pry off of my wrist intact when the swelling in my hands finally went down a few days later.

  And still, even when I should be weeping at the life I have lost, or the life that has at least been broken through interruption, all I can think is that these things are of no use to me now. These are not the objects I would choose to keep, had I been given a choice. I would want the collection of music I’d so religiously cultivated throughout so many years, music that Tom hated and I loved, albums that he would never have thought to keep. I would want my overstuffed binder of recipes, the dishes I’d made for myself and others countless times, now lost in the ether of my memory. I would want the box full of sewing patterns I never got the chance to make. I would want my bookshelves full of books. A hospital bracelet, a piece of sea glass . . . these things do me no good. I don’t need to remember what Lake Superior smells like. I need to remember my life, the day-to-day of it, not the highlights.

  I close the box, knowing that there’s nothing here to help me, knowing that it’s futile to think that some object could drag me back across those lost years, back into the person I was. There is only what I have now, who I am now. I hurry to search for baby clothes because, while my hopes might be dashed, Stratford Pines begins in a half hour.

  Connie

  I call my mother on her birthday. I can’t say it’s something I’ve always done. There were plenty of years when the day slipped past like any other, and then I’d be sending flowers in apology instead of celebration. We’re pretty even, though, because I can’t remember the last time she called me on my birthday either. Still, this year is different.

  “Yeah?” her voice comes over the phone, and it’s a little thicker than I remember. I think of what Dr. Grath said about hearing the cigarettes in my voice.

  “It’s me,” I say and wait the obligatory moment it takes her to connect the dots.

  “Con,” she says. It’s her hostess voice, the one she uses to greet customers in the restaurant where she’s worked since I can remember. It’s a bit overly friendly, trying to cover for the real distance that exists between us. “How are you?”

  “I’m good. I’m really good.”

  “Good, good.” I can hear voices in the background.

  “I’m not interrupting something, am I?”

  “Nah, I’ve just got the girls over for martinis. Celebrating.” My mother’s friends are all paunchy and deeply wrinkled, and none of them have my mother’s immaculate bone structure to begin with. She’s better than all of them, I think. Even now, pushing sixty.

  “Of course. Happy birthday.”

  “Thanks, hun.”

  “I was going to send flowers. But then I figured I’d call.”

  “Mmm. You going to church?”

  I consider for a long moment whether or not it’s acceptable to lie to my mother on her birthday. I decide in favor of dishonesty. “Once in a while.”

  “Now you know nothing in your life will come correct until you make right with the Lord. That illness you’ve got, that’s the sin you lived for so long. That’s why the doctors can’t help you. You’re not looking to the right doctor, honey.”

  “I know, Maureen,” I say, because using her real name drives her crazy. All of her friends call her Betts, though I’ve never figured out why. I suppose it’s one of the many mysterious things about the woman who raised me, all of those little rituals and bits of wisdom held over from her model days in New York. Drinking ice water will force your body to burn more calories. Coconut oil should be used on the face and hands every night before bed. Vodka is acceptable in large doses, but never a single sip of beer. And Betts, always Betts, not Mom, and certainly not Maureen. It was a veneer of beauty and glamour that had been my mother’s religion, and mine, before she found God in the more traditional sense.

  She was saved right around the time I got sick. I’m not sure if there was any connection there, if the news of my diagnosis drove my mother further into her own mess of born-again bullshit. All I know is that she seemed to forget all of the laws of her o
ld life just as I was reaping the awful results of living by them. Her ethic of beauty had served only to punish me. And yet, even now, especially now, when I am in possession of the rarest of faces, her laws are still the due north of my compass. I am both too young and too old to trade my religion for a new one, as she has.

  “You should come out to my church some Sunday,” she says. “It’s not too long of a drive. And the ladies would love to see you. It might be good for you, you know? A change of scenery. Some time away from that city.”

  That city is how she always refers to Chicago. At first, because it wasn’t New York, and certainly wasn’t L.A. And now because of its crime rate and gay bars and liquor stores and its heretic population. I wonder if I’d even recognize my mother anymore, with her dark hair and long neck, now circled with a chain that holds her golden cross. She’d always been a denizen of cities, before I left her with too many lines on her face and too many extra pounds, in a double-wide trailer near the Wisconsin border. Now she’s just as wary of my home as she would have been traveling to the Sudan. How easy it is to reinvent yourself, I think. To become someone you would have once hated.

  “Something’s different, Mom,” I say. There’s silence on the other end of the line. “Betts, you there?”

  “Have you been praying about it?” She sounds stricken, yet resolute. It occurs to me that she must be thinking the worst, that I would call her on her birthday to tell her that I’ve come to the end of my rope.

  “No, Christ, I’m not dying, okay?”

  “Please don’t.” Her voice sounds strangely weak.

  “What?”

  “Don’t say things like that.”

  “It’s the truth. I’m not dying. Not anymore.” Silence again. “Betts.”

  Her voice comes through a bit stronger this time. “Don’t say his name in vain. At least, not when you’re on the phone with me, all right? I can’t control what you do when I’m not around, but I won’t stand for it in my presence.”

  I pull at the tension in my forehead with my fingertips. A few more conversations like this and all of my lines will come right back. “Did you happen to hear anything else I just said?”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say,” she replies. “But the ladies are here. Making martinis.”

  “You told me.”

  “They’re waiting for me. I should go. After all, I’m the belle of the ball today, aren’t I?”

  “Unlike every other day?” I ask, and I hear her chuckle.

  “Are you getting out at all?”

  “Yeah, I’m getting out.” I think of Thursday group, and the short walk to the L from my apartment. It’s been sunny these past few weeks. I walk over to my window and pull back the curtains, spilling fresh brightness onto the spare trappings of my apartment.

  “Good. Fresh air. It’s good for you.”

  “Thanks, Betts. Happy birthday.” I hear the line click and let my hand hover for a second before setting my phone down on my windowsill. What had I wanted to say? I don’t even know. Would it change my mother back, if she knew I’d been saved too? That I had been saved in a more physical sense than her, and by the blasphemy of science? Perhaps she would merely think that all of her prayers had been answered, like one final endorsement of her newfound faith. Perhaps nothing can spin her backward, the way I have been reborn in an earlier, more perfect version of myself.

  It’s ironic, too, because all of my life, my past has been my only liability. No one wants to hear that you were trash, that you’d turned up like a shiny penny in the middle of a rat’s nest. I’d glossed over it for years, pretended to be from Chicago instead of the rural armpit of one of its suburbs. But now my history is gone. I released it like the string of a helium balloon, watching it spin upward into the sky, barely bidding it farewell when the wind spirited it away. I don’t need a history anymore. I don’t need to lie. It’s the first time in my life that the truth is much more smooth and solid, diamond hard. I only wish that I could scrub away all those years and all that history for my mother as well. To finally give her the life I robbed from her, all those years ago. But even now, even amid the time of the miracle cure, there are some things that are still out of reach.

  I’m not sure where to go at night anymore. I went out for a while when I first moved back to Chicago, before the exhaustion and the general emaciation took over in earnest, but I can’t really remember the exact names or locations of those dark, neon-lit enclaves where I would spend my nights. I don’t have much to wear either, I discover, when I step out of the shower, the cool air of my little apartment making me shiver as I paw through my closet. The majority of my clothes were chosen for comfort and because they were cheap. But among the oversize sweatshirts and threadbare fleece pajama pants I find a slate-colored tank top with some beading around the neckline and a pair of black leggings. It’ll do, I think, as I admire myself in the mirror. I’m deliciously thin; even in such skin-tight clothing, nothing moves much as I twist and turn in front of the mirror. I pull my hair back and slather on thick eyeliner, and suddenly I wish Dr. Grath could see me, because I am Edie Sedgwick at the Chelsea Hotel. I am fit to be someone’s muse. But that’s the trouble when you’re beautiful and your best friend is blind: it doesn’t do either one of you much good.

  I decide on Smart Bar and hail a cab, brimming with anticipation. It’s raining a bit, and as the cab rushes through the damp streets I imagine we’re under water, moving through a sunken city whose lights have not yet gone out. I tip the driver way too much when he pulls up in front of the lit sign for the Metro, and he grins at me with Cheshire teeth as I step out onto the damp curb and hurry inside. The beat of the music is there, even before I’ve been swallowed up by the darkness and the heat and the teeming movement of bodies. It’s that hard, thrumming beat that thumps within my chest like a surrogate heart. It’s a young crowd here, college students probably, but I’m pulled into the dance floor all the same, and I wonder how old I look to these bourgeoning adults.

  I swim my way to the bar and I’m carded, which makes me grin, which makes the bartender prop his elbows on the bar and lean very close to me to take my order. He’s pretty enough, tan with dark hair, but I’m more interested in thrusting myself back into the mob of dancers than I am in making small talk with a man who is paid to be here. I order Malibu rum with pineapple juice, and it’s so sweet it nearly makes my teeth hurt, but the alcohol doesn’t burn as much going down. It’s what I drank as a kid, when my friend Tanya’s older sister would give us the leftovers from her parties. We’d jump the fence from the trailer park into the apartment complex next door and sit in its empty pool among the dead leaves and condom wrappers and drink until we could barely climb our way out again. I think about it now, nearly twenty years later, what it was like to be fourteen and newly minted and so full of promise. It feels a little bit like how I feel tonight, though the drink doesn’t taste familiar at all when I sip it. That’s the one bit of disappointment, but it’s fleeting, and soon I’m worming my way back in between the clatter of bodies and bobbing to the music and the flash of colored lights.

  I haven’t been dancing long when I spot him. Or rather, when I see him spot me. He’s young, fuck he’s young, maybe twenty-five, with stringy blond hair and arms that show veins and thin fibers of muscle beneath his skin. A sort of a punk kid, I think, catching the glint of a silver ring in his nose. I take a gulp of my drink and pause in my dancing as he makes his way toward me. He’s very pretty, almost feminine, the kind of pouty youth who is born to stare shirtless from Levi’s ads or lounge on rumpled beds for Calvin Klein. It’s a sort of comfort, his beauty. We’re of the same breed, he and I. He wears combat boots and a stocking cap. I lick my lips, making the red stain of my lipstick shine in the overhead lights.

  “You all right?” he says, loudly, into my ear. He smells thickly of sweat. I smile, clearing my throat, which still burns hot and raw from the alcohol. The heat is starting to spread downward, though, curling its way out
of my stomach, sinking heavily into my limbs, and settling low beneath my pelvis.

  “Fine,” I say, baring my teeth at him. He’s matched his movements to mine, and while it’s not quite dancing as much as it is pulsing with the rhythm of the backbeat, it feels good to be in motion. When he smiles, his two front teeth angle slightly toward each other, and I think maybe this boy and I have more in common than even I imagine. I picture him growing up in the rural southern reaches of Illinois, a beautiful young redneck working in the sun. Maybe he picked me because he recognizes the girl I was, once, like a smell of motor oil and cheap wine that will never entirely wash off.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Edie.”

  “I’m Colin.” He offers a hand and I take it, clasping it between us. “You roll?”

  “Not lately.”

  “Want to?”

  I cock an eyebrow at him. I’d done my share of Ecstasy in my former life, though I cut out pretty much everything since I got sick. But it was fun, and I’m in the mood for some fun. I nod, and he leads me by the hand into the darkness that clings to the club’s walls, away from the brightness of the dance floor. He pulls something out of his pocket, and I catch a glimpse of clear plastic before it’s spirited back into the tight denim of his jeans.

  “How much?” I ask, leaning in close, smelling the pungent tang of his skin. He shakes his head.

  “For you? First one’s free.” He brushes his hand to his mouth and then leans toward me, closing his lips over mine, his tongue pressing something small and round into my mouth. I swallow the pill easily and then stand on my tiptoes to press my mouth back into his.