The Fall of Lisa Bellow

by Susan Perabo

  “I’m surprised they’re not trick-or-treating,” Meredith said.

  Becca laughed. The boys were lingering around the Ping-Pong table, cheering on a ninth-grade match, trying to look like they fit in. Meredith accidentally caught Steven’s eye and he smiled and nodded at her, raised his Sprite in greeting.

  “Do you know him?” Becca asked.

  “He sits behind me in social studies,” Meredith said.

  “He’s like nine,” Becca said. “Once in English last year he asked if he could draw a watch on me. A watch. Is that the weirdest thing you’ve ever heard?”

  Which watch? Meredith wondered. The watch with the springs sticking out? The one with monkey paws for hands?

  “It’s pretty weird,” she said.

  •

  “Can you move your legs?” Lisa said. Even though it was a question, she didn’t ask it. It was the kind of question your mother said: “Can you set the table.” “Will you get the door.”

  Meredith pulled up and sat with her legs crossed. She actually liked sitting like this under normal circumstances, often sat in this position (Indian style, her father called it, until she informed him this was offensive) on the floor while playing battling animals with Evan or hanging out with her friends. Of course the bathtub wasn’t as comfortable as her bedroom floor, not nearly wide enough for crisscross-applesauce, so her knees were both pressed against the porcelain sides, and since she was sitting a little cockamamie already so as to avoid the spigot . . .

  “I’m tired,” Lisa said, drawing out the word so that it sounded like a sickness. “Are you tired?”

  “What time is it?”

  “What time isn’t it?” Lisa asked.

  “It isn’t time for social studies,” Meredith said. “It isn’t time for English. It isn’t time for—”

  Lisa drew another hash mark on the shower wall under the word BITCH.

  “For what?” Meredith asked.

  “For you being a bitch. All I asked was what time isn’t it?”

  “I don’t think that’s worthy of a bitch mark.”

  “What are you even doing here?” Lisa asked abruptly, a sour look on her face.

  “What do you mean, what am I doing here?”

  “I mean what are you doing here? In this place. It’s not like he needs you for anything. It’s not like—” She stopped midsentence. She rubbed at her nose and then her eyes. She looked like she was getting a cold.

  “What?” Meredith asked.

  “Nothing.” Lisa closed her eyes and rubbed a spot between them, like she had a sinus headache. “Forget it. Never mind.”

  “No, what? It’s not like what?”

  “I’m sorry, but I just don’t understand the purpose of you,” Lisa said, her eyes still shut, her lips twisted into a grimace. “What’s the purpose of you?”

  “I don’t know. I guess . . . company?”

  Lisa stopped rubbing the spot and opened her eyes. She stared at Meredith for five long seconds. Then she made another mark on the wall.

  “What?” Meredith asked. “What was that for?”

  “For company . . . ” Lisa said, mocking her. It wasn’t how Meredith had said it at all. She couldn’t understand how Lisa could have heard it that way.

  “I just—” she started.

  “Look, it’s my pen, so I get to make the marks.”

  What did the man think of the marks on the shower wall? It was a Sharpie—a permanent marker—that Lisa was using. Why had Meredith not considered this before? It wasn’t like those marks were ever going to go away. They couldn’t just wipe them off with a towel. How long had it been since the man had taken a shower anyway? Was it possible there was another shower in the house? Or maybe that he showered at work?

  “What do you think his job is?” she asked Lisa.

  “Who?”

  As if there were any other his, any other who.

  “His.” A gesture with her head toward the rest of the apartment.

  “Oh, he works at a store,” Lisa said. “He works at Best Buy.”

  “How do you know?”

  Lisa sneezed. She didn’t have one of those cute, tiny, guinea-pig sneezes. She sneezed like an adult, a full body affair.

  “Gimme me some toilet paper,” she said.

  Meredith pulled some off the roll that was sitting on the edge of the tub. Long ago they’d dispensed with putting it on the roller. They used it as napkins and Kleenex.

  “So how do you know?” Meredith asked.

  Lisa wiped her nose and tossed the wad of toilet paper in the direction of the wastebasket. “Know what?”

  “That he works at Best Buy.”

  “Oh, he told me. He told me he could maybe get us a TV for in here.”

  “For in here? Where could we even put a TV?”

  “We could mount it,” Lisa said, annoyed. “We could like . . . I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.”

  “Maybe he could get you a phone instead,” Meredith said. “You know? Maybe you should ask for that, since he’s feeling generous.”

  “Maybe . . . ” Lisa said absently, totally missing the joke, the point. Did Lisa even want a phone? Meredith wondered. Did she even want to call for help? Or would she rather just watch television?

  Lisa shifted again and kicked her in the shin. Meredith stood up.

  “Don’t get up,” Lisa said, no longer absent.

  “I have to pee.”

  It was weird how it was no big deal, peeing in front of Lisa. It wasn’t like being in the locker room at all, or even at a sleepover. She never thought in her whole life that she’d be able to pee in front of someone else, but now she did it without even thinking, sat on the toilet without shame, as if she were by herself. She pulled up her leggings and washed her hands in the small sink. She looked at herself in the mirror and her reflection reminded her of a game she used to play at home, before . . . before this. Well not a game, really—something like a game. Something she would say to herself.

  This is—

  “Why’d you just lie there?” Lisa asked from behind her.

  Meredith blinked at the face in the mirror. This is?

  “Meredith. Why’d you just lie there?”

  She turned. “What?”

  Lisa was staring at her. They looked at each other in silence for what seemed like forever. Meredith was afraid. Of what? She couldn’t figure it out. Only that it seemed like if she spoke, everything might change.

  Finally Lisa spoke.

  “Bring me a cup of water?” she asked. “I’m dying of thirst. I think I’m getting a cold.”

  “You don’t look very good,” Meredith said. Too late she realized this comment would surely get her a mark on the wall, but the pen was limp in Lisa’s hand.

  “I don’t feel very good,” Lisa said.

  Meredith filled a Dixie cup with water and stepped back into the tub.

  •

  Upstairs, in the Lucketts’ dining room, Amanda and Abby were sitting at the head of the table selling Lisa Bellow Chain of Support bracelets for five dollars. There was a line of about twenty zombies waiting to claim theirs.

  “You guys!” Abby said, when Meredith and Becca squeezed in behind them. “We’ve been working like dogs. Are you gonna help or what?”

  “Sure,” Meredith said. “Let me take a shift.”

  “No, it’s fine,” Abby said. “I’ll keep doing it.” She smiled as she turned to her next customer.

  “This is sort of gross,” Becca said as they walked toward the living room. “I think they’re enjoying themselves.”

  “They’re your friends,” Meredith said.

  “Eh,” Becca said, shrugging.

  In the living room a movie was playing on the flat-screen on the wall. Bodies were splayed out on the living-room floor, some piled like puppies. How many people were even at this party? Meredith wondered. She didn’t recognize half of them. She and Becca sat down in the corner. On the TV screen a man dressed as a clown was applying bri
ght red lipstick to his eyebrows.

  “It’s good, though,” Meredith said. “It’s good to support Lisa’s mom, right?”

  “Lisa hated her mother,” Becca said.

  “She did?”

  “God, yes, she was always tearing her down. She complained about her constantly, made fun of her, sometimes right to her face. Seriously, she said terrible things about her all the time.”

  “Don’t you say terrible things about your mother?”

  “My mother has enough on her plate,” Becca said. “She’s about to have a baby, because my sister’s about to have a baby. My mother already works all day and takes care of my father. I don’t think she needs me saying terrible things about her on top of all that.”

  Meredith looked at the TV screen. A girl was running through an empty hospital, her hair swinging behind her. She didn’t have any shoes on. She was running down a dark corridor, and then she turned a corner and there was the clown, and everyone in the living room screamed as the clown thrust a barbecue skewer through the girl’s throat.

  “This movie sucks,” Becca said.

  •

  Meredith did not look behind her. She did not like to look behind her, not anymore, not even when someone was calling her name, or when there were footsteps, or like now, this November afternoon, when she could hear clearly the sound of a car following slowly, the crunch of tires, slow moving tires, on the brittle leaves that covered the street. She gripped the straps of her backpack and increased her pace, not running, but walking as fast as she could without breaking into a trot. To look behind was to acknowledge that there was something there. The police? Her parents? A face from the books of men who might take her? They were all the same in this moment, something to be ignored, or outrun.

  “Meredith?” a voice called.

  Still, she did not stop, not recognizing the voice, and then the car pulled even with her and then a little bit ahead of her so there was no way to not see the face leaning out the driver’s side window, the smiling, hopeful face of Mrs. Bellow.

  “Hi, Meredith.”

  She stopped walking. She was breathless but tried to pretend otherwise.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Do you need a ride?”

  “No,” she said. “My house—” she gestured in the general direction—“just a few blocks.”

  “It’s cold,” Mrs. Bellow said. “I’m just coming from work. Let me take you?”

  Meredith looked down the road. She could nearly see her street, but not quite. She looked back at Mrs. Bellow, smiling her hopeful smile. “Okay,” she said. “Sure.”

  She walked around the front of the car and got into the passenger seat, cradling her backpack on her lap.

  “I’m working mornings now,” Mrs. Bellow said, turning in her seat to face Meredith, not driving nor, seemingly, preparing to drive. “So if you girls want to come over after school, I’ll be there.”

  “Great,” Meredith said. “I’ll . . . I’ll tell them.”

  “How was school today?”

  “Fine,” Meredith said. “You know. All right.”

  The car was idling. It was an old car, and the noise of the engine rose and fell as it idled, as if it didn’t understand what it was supposed to do. A car passed them, then another.

  “Who’d you have lunch with?” Mrs. Bellow asked.

  “Becca. And Abby and Amanda.”

  “Good. They’re nice girls. I’m glad you all are friends.”

  “Yeah,” Meredith said.

  “Did you have any tests or anything?”

  “We had a test in social studies,” Meredith said.

  “That was Lisa’s favorite,” Mrs. Bellow said. “From way back. She loved learning about other places. I always felt bad that we didn’t have enough money to travel in the summer. Or I was always working. Or something.”

  “You will,” Meredith said. “I mean, someday you can travel. You and Lisa.”

  “I think so, too. I’m thinking Spain. Right? Get a couple cute little bikinis to wear on the beach. Find some cute guys.”

  “Sure.” Meredith could picture this easily, Lisa and her mother and some hot guys on a sunny beach in Spain. But then she remembered what Becca had said about Lisa ripping on her mother, and so she imagined that, in Spain, Lisa and the hot guys might ditch Mrs. Bellow at the hotel and go to the beach without her.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” Mrs. Bellow asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you like anyone? Do you have a secret crush?”

  She could tell that Mrs. Bellow really, really wanted her to have a secret crush. She thought of what Lisa had said about the boy in the high school yearbook, the boy who became her father. Had that boy been her mother’s secret crush once? Had she imagined their wedding, their honeymoon, their babies? Did the high school Mrs. Bellow imagine the way the boy would touch her? Meredith thought of Steven Overbeck, his watches, how his fingers had felt on the inside of her wrist, how Becca had laughed at him at the party. One day Steven Overbeck would be a boy in the high school yearbook. Would she point to his picture?

  “Lisa has a boyfriend,” Mrs. Bellow said. “Do you know him?”

  “I’ve met him,” Meredith said.

  “I’ve had pretty bad luck with men,” Mrs. Bellow said. “That’s the truth. A couple years ago I dated this guy, a real creep. He called me last week and said he’d heard about Lisa. I didn’t like the way he said it. It wasn’t like he was calling to say he was sorry. It was like there was some other reason he wanted me to know that he knew. I called the police and they went to his house. They said they didn’t see anything unusual. They said he just had a house full of cats.” She paused. “Don’t you think that’s unusual? A house full of cats? It’s not like he’s an old lady.”

  “Yeah, that’s kinda weird.”

  “Anyway. I have a great guy now. Knock wood he doesn’t take off. I don’t think he will. Of course, I’ve thought that before.” She half-smiled at Meredith, and Meredith understood why Lisa hated her, and also why Lisa always brought her a sandwich from Deli Barn and left it in the fridge.

  “I have a lot of homework to do,” Meredith said.

  Mrs. Bellow started driving, but instead of going straight at the stop sign she turned left. Meredith didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure if Mrs. Bellow was lost or if she was just taking a different way or . . . or what?

  “Peter,” she said. “That’s the man I’m seeing.” She sneaked a look over at Meredith. “He thinks Lisa might have run away. He thinks maybe she went to one of those places we always talked about going. Spain. Brazil.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I do know. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t do that.”

  “Some other people are saying that, too,” Meredith said. “But I don’t think so either.”

  “Of course not,” Mrs. Bellow said. “We know she wouldn’t do that. The police asked me about it. They said they had to ask me about it because she did it once before, ran off. Just for like twenty-four hours, but I called the police, so they have a record of it. She was twelve. It was when I was with that man, the one with the cats. I got up in the morning and her bed was empty.”

  “Where was she?”

  “A friend’s house. In the city. Some girl I didn’t even know. Some girl she’d met online. She told the girl’s parents that I knew where she was, but I didn’t. And she knew I didn’t. She stayed there the whole day, too. A whole night and a whole day. She was trying to scare me. She was twelve. She was only twelve then. She wasn’t very smart.”

  “But you don’t think she ran away, right?” Meredith asked. “I mean this time.”

  “I know she didn’t. Because when she came back that time, and she saw how I was—I was a hot mess—she promised she would never do it again. And she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t do that to me. She wouldn’t do that to me because she knows that I would die without her. So she wouldn’t do it.”

  “I don�
��t think she would either,” Meredith said. She looked out the window. A group of four little kids, maybe kindergarteners, were walking in a line down the sidewalk, a mother and a beagle bringing up the rear.

  “You know her,” Mrs. Bellow said. “That’s not who she is. I’m not saying I’m perfect. I’m not saying she’s perfect. I’m just saying that’s not who she is.”

  •

  The next day when she came home from school the house was quiet and Meredith thought she was alone. She went up to her room to change and from the window saw Evan in the backyard. He was throwing a ball underhanded up in the air and then trying to catch it. It was a game a four-year-old might play. He wasn’t even throwing it that high—maybe ten or fifteen feet—but she could tell he was trying to spin it so that it didn’t drop straight into his glove. She stood in the corner of the window and peered through the curtain so he wouldn’t see her. He missed three in a row before he caught one. After the catch, he threw the ball up only about five feet, a couple times, and one he caught and one glanced off the heel of his glove. Then he threw one really high, circled under it, looking confident.

  The ball landed about six feet to his left.

  She stepped away from the window. She changed her clothes and sat down on her bed and started reading. They were finishing All Quiet on the Western Front. They’d been reading it all fall, it seemed. The teacher kept reminding them how young the boy was—only nineteen—but that didn’t seem so young to Meredith.

  Evan stuck his head into her room.

  “He dies,” he said.

  “You mentioned that already,” she said. She closed the book but kept her finger in it. “What’re you doing?”

  “Nothing. Working out.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Good,” he said. “It’s going good.”

  “Good,” she said.

  He walked to the window. He had to know she had seen him now. He turned.

  “How’re the cool kids?”

  “They’re fine.”

  “You blowing off the not-cool kids?” He was pissed. He was pissed because she had seen him miss ball after ball.

  “It’s not like that,” she said. “I—”

  “What’s it like, then?”

  “It’s like I have a life that’s none of your business. Just like you have a life that is none of my business. You don’t see me telling you what to do.”