Little Wrecks

by Meredith Miller

  For a few minutes, Ruth felt like Matt was with her in the same, separate world. But that was just another dizzy trick, another piece of unsteady ground moving under her. Like Magda says, people suck. Matt knows that already; they wouldn’t be burdening him with any new information by stealing his stash. They have to do something. It seems like this is the year for making things happen. The Year of Necessary Cruelty. The thing is, Ruth can’t figure out whether it’s the three of them who hand out justice. Is that who they are?

  What would Mackie say?

  There is no answer in the sky, and the yard Virgin just stares her distant stare. Maybe that is the answer.

  eleven

  ISABEL STANDS BY the side of a swimming pool on Harbor Ridge, feeling the sun and breathing. She lifts her arms like wings and drops of blood scatter across the cement. She bends her knees and launches herself up and out. For maybe one whole second she is moving through the morning air.

  Then the smack of water and she floats facedown, looking at the twisted sunlight on the bottom of a stranger’s pool. The blood from all the cuts in her wrists and thighs swirls against the medicine-blue color of swimming-pool paint. Everything feels close and bright. There are frogs floating around her, which seems right somehow. They have black, deep eyes that promise to teach her how to live comfortably between water and earth, in between one place and another. This is the real reason there are frogs in fairy tales.

  Someone is screaming. She tries to take in a breath to scream back, but her mouth fills with water. Then she feels the covers pressing down on her and knows it’s her father and her alarm, both going off at the same time.

  Monday morning.

  “Isabel!” He sounds angry or, even weirder, scared.

  “I’m up!”

  “Never mind pretending, just get down here.”

  Isabel comes down the stairs with her shoulder sliding against the wall so it can take some of her weight. Her knees aren’t all the way working yet. She has to bunch up the hem of her grandmother’s yellow satin nightgown so it doesn’t trip her on the stairs. Through the living room doorway she can see her dad standing there with the couch pulled out from the wall.

  “What?” she says. “Do we have mice? I heard something the other night.”

  “Come here, Isabel.”

  She looks over at the wall under the window, where the couch usually is, and sees her mother crouching there. She has a look on her face like Henry would make, like she knows she’s doing something naughty but she thinks it’s funny. Like them standing there in their pajamas freaking out is her getting one over on them.

  “Jesus! Has she been there since Saturday?”

  “Don’t call your brother.”

  “What?”

  “He needs to focus on college. We’ll handle this ourselves.”

  “Dad, I wasn’t gonna call Kevin. Or Elizabeth either. You need to call the freaking hospital!”

  “We can’t call the hospital. If an ambulance pulls up the whole street will see it.”

  “Oh my God, you actually just said that.”

  Her mother is still sitting there, hugging her knees and looking back and forth between them like she’s watching a tennis match.

  “She needs water,” her father says. “You can’t go two days without water.”

  “She has been there since Saturday, hasn’t she? This is so messed up. I’m not supposed to have to deal with this.”

  “This is not a question of what you have to deal with, Isabel. Go in the kitchen and get a glass of water.”

  By the time she gets back, he has her mother sitting up on the couch, but it isn’t pushed back in. The living room looks broken. She puts the water down on the floor next to them because the coffee table is shoved to the other side of the room.

  She leans in and says, “Mom, I’m going to school but I’ll be back later,” then gathers her nightgown and runs up the stairs.

  At school, it takes Isabel a long time to figure out what to say. She finds Ruth in the hallway and stands watching her rifle through the pile of markers and pastels and colored pencils on the bottom of her locker.

  “I’m thinking there’s an upside to Monday morning,” Ruth says.

  “Huh?”

  Can Ruth feel what other people feel when they look at her? Not the blonde-with-tits thing, the other thing. When she opens her mouth and that mismatched, gravelly voice comes out, when you see how she holds a pencil, you just know you’ll be hearing her name someday. You’ll see a documentary about her on channel 13, or read about her in the New York Times Arts section, and think, I wonder if her voice still sounds like that? I wonder if she remembers me?

  “You don’t have a pencil that’s kind of brick red, do you?” Ruth says now.

  “Brick red? What kind of a question is that? I have a blue pen and a black pen. I have first-period math.”

  Or maybe Ruth will wind up hiding for two days behind a couch in Highbone. That’s the other possibility. Mr. Lipsky obviously used to think Isabel’s mom was destined for greatness. Look how that turned out. Days like today, though, Isabel feels like Ruth is the one who will get away, like the reason for Ruth is hope. At some point, she’ll get bigger and brighter than the everyday things around her and she’ll have to go somewhere with more space. All three of them say they’re going to leave, but if Isabel had to bet, her money would be on Ruth.

  Ruth pulls her head out of her locker, looking exasperated with people who don’t keep a full range of colored pencils on their person at all times. Thank God Isabel ran into her first. It’s hard to be scared or hate the world with Ruth right in front of you.

  “Okay, back to the point,” Ruth says. “Monday morning, we’re all still wasted from the weekend, right? But so are the teachers. They’ve been sitting around by their friends’ swimming pools drinking Rob Roys all weekend. I think Monday morning is a window of opportunity. We can get anything past these people at this point.”

  “What do you have in mind? What’s the scam?”

  “I don’t know, maybe world domination? Or maybe not doing the history homework? Seriously, what difference does anything in our lives make on a Monday morning?”

  Outside, there are circles of kids all over the football field, smoking. Isabel looks from the grass to the sky, takes a deep breath, and wades in, with Ruth behind her. They find Magda sitting against the wall behind the storage house, hugging her knees.

  “You look like a Nazi in that coat, Magda.”

  “I don’t think the Nazis let each other go around with their shirtsleeves hanging out of their coats, Isabel,” Ruth says. “Pretty sure those guys buttoned shit right up.”

  “Anyway, no way Nazis had Chuck Taylors.” Magda leans back and lifts up both feet. “These’re the all-American shoes, girls.”

  Charlie is there too, in the scrub at the side of the field, beating on the chain-link fence with a sledgehammer. He swings with all his force, and the hammer bounces back in a different direction every time, wrenching his arms around. She looks at his body and tries to calm herself with the memory of what it feels like, but even that’s no good anymore. The thought of him touching her makes her feel dead, cut open.

  “Why are you guys wearing sweaters and coats?” Ruth waves her hands at the pitiless sun. “It’s spring, people. Inappropriately dressed for the weather, that’s a sign of mental illness, you know. Mrs. Kemp said so in health class. That’s why the ’Nam vets in the park always have two sweaters and three jackets on in August. And why is Charlie doing that? He looks like something out of a bad existentialist movie.”

  “Guess he’s letting off steam. I’m just observing the behavior of Charlie Ferguson in his natural habitat.” Magda cocks her head to listen to the high, shuddering twang as Charlie’s hammer hits the fence. “He took it out of the back of a truck while we were walking here. And I wear this coat ’cause I can keep lots of stuff in it. It’s my house I carry around with me. Think of me as a snail, babe. Snails are a theme late
ly.”

  “Jesus,” Isabel says, “is the whole world like this, or do you think we’re just caught in some kind of fucked-up suburban vortex?”

  “Both. Those are not mutually exclusive propositions.” Magda waves a finger like Mr. Kronenberg, the math teacher. “On the upside, no one can see back here from the school windows. This is our new spot.”

  “There is no one watching from the windows, Magda. I said to Isabel, it’s Monday. We’re all constitutionally incapable of giving a shit, even if we wanted to. The teachers are just pretending better than us.”

  “So”—Isabel falls back to lie on the grass—“my mom’s doing her Problem with No Name act again.”

  “The vague malaise? The suburban epidemic? Did they give her Valium? Can we steal some?”

  “Way better than that. My mom doesn’t mess around. Betty Friedan has nothing on her, man. She was behind the couch.”

  “Huh?”

  “Remember on Saturday my dad asked me if I knew where my mom was? She was behind the fucking couch. On the floor. Hiding or something, for at least two days.”

  “Right, I don’t actually know what to say to that.”

  “See?” Isabel looks at Ruth. “Even Saint Magdalene of All Knowledge has got nothing. I guess sometimes this place is just beyond words. If we went to the next town over and told them about Highbone, do you think no one would believe us? Or do you think all the towns are like this?”

  “Jesus,” Ruth says.

  “Yeah.” Isabel closes her eyes. “I said that at the time. So, I might as well tell you it was her discharge papers.”

  “What?”

  “At the bonfire, I burned her discharge papers. From King’s Park.”

  “Your mom was in King’s Park?” She can hear Magda slap Ruth’s leg, but really it doesn’t matter what anyone says at this point.

  “Yep, she signed herself in. Right before I met you guys. She got them to put her in a room with a caged-in balcony to stop her from throwing herself off, in a ward with people who swung kittens around by the tail and scratched the flesh off their own arms, because she figured it was better than staying in her own house with her own family. Well, she was kind of right about that.”

  “What did you do?” Ruth asks. “This morning, I mean. Wasn’t she hungry or thirsty or something? Can people go two days without food and water?”

  “She had a bag of M&M’s back there. She stashes candy all over the house, in the couch cushions, in the linen closet, everywhere. Dad said she’d be dehydrated, but maybe she came out and got water when we were sleeping. God, imagine her creeping around down there. Why does that seem spooky? It’s her house.”

  “So, what did he do, your dad?”

  “He got all focused on making her drink water. Like the whole thing was about her being dehydrated. If she just drank a glass of water, problem solved. Which one of them is crazier?”

  Isabel can see Ruth searching the air for something else to say. Reaching out with her mind like there might be meaning in the ether. She wants to shout at her that it isn’t there. They’re never going to find it.

  “There could have been a fire, and we wouldn’t have known she was back there. What if there was a fire?” She stops so they won’t hear the lump in her throat.

  “We’re not going to math,” Magda says. “Ruth, you’re not going to the art room either. Monday just reached a new level.”

  They’re all still holding unlit cigarettes. Ruth taps Isabel and hands her a lighter with a hula girl on one side and Coney Island on the other. They’re quiet for a while, just smoking.

  Then Magda says, “I feel like that woman from the parking lot at the mall, like language just doesn’t cover it anymore. How are we supposed to respond to this place? What are we supposed to say?”

  “We can’t put up with this kind of shit forever.” Isabel puts her cigarette out and looks at both of them in turn. “We have to do something. You guys know we do.”

  “Everyone gets that, Isabel. The question is what?”

  “Matt’s house. Screw Charlie. We need to do it ourselves. It’s wrong, but right now, I’m thinking it’s necessary. Anyway, I kind of can’t tell the difference between right and wrong anymore. It’s a little scary, if you guys wanna know.”

  “Yep. I’m with Isabel.” Isabel has to check to make sure it’s Ruth talking.

  “Really?”

  “You’re what?” Magda says. “I thought Matt was your personal charity case.”

  “Yeah, well he can call the Good Samaritans. I changed my mind.”

  “See?” Magda leans back onto Isabel’s drawn-up knees. “Even Ruth has caved in. This place is just too fucking soulless much for us.”

  “Maybe ‘wised up’ is actually the phrase you’re after?”

  “What’s the point of stealing Matt’s stash if it makes us just as shallow as everyone else here?”

  “Nah,” Ruth says. “Not gonna happen. We will get out and we will never be them. I’m getting out with my soul intact if I have to shoot my way out.”

  “You don’t think our parents used to think that, Ruth? You don’t think they sat around at soda fountains telling each other they were incorruptible?”

  “It isn’t about being incorruptible,” Ruth says. “It’s about staying alive.”

  That’s what it is about her, Isabel thinks. It’s people like Ruth who get caught up in some vision no one else can see and walk bravely into hails of bullets or freeze to death exploring the Antarctic. They never think they can die pointlessly like everyone else. Until they do.

  “Well, I’m not the one who’s making the plan,” Magda says. “You two are some kind of knights in armor now, you figure out how to rescue yourselves.”

  “Already did.” Isabel sits up and they all look over at Charlie and lower their voices. “Charlie thinks we can’t possibly rob a house because we’re girls. Magda heard him. He’ll never in a million years think it’s us.”

  Magda looks at her like she’s half freaked out and half impressed, like Isabel just pulled a gun or something.

  “You want to steal Matt’s weed and not tell Charlie? What the hell happened to you since Saturday?”

  “Um, I think we pretty much just covered that, Magda.”

  “We’ll get caught, Isabel.”

  “There’s a way,” Ruth says. “If you two just listen to me for five seconds I’ll tell you. I went to Matt’s on Saturday night. That’s his lighter. I took it. I can get Matt to come with me and my mom and Danny to watch this meteor shower on Friday. Mom and Danny are all worked up over it.”

  “You think he’ll go for that? He’s a dealer. Friday night is prime time for him.”

  “Matt thinks my mother is the best thing since sliced bread. Also, he’s obsessed with planets and stuff. He’ll come. Trust me.”

  “From where I’m standing,” Isabel says, “your mom is the best thing since sliced bread. Anybody want a spare mother? I’m thinking I could maybe get along without mine. Shit, sorry, Magda.”

  “Whatever,” Magda laughs. “I’m in, under one condition.”

  “What?”

  “This is capital. We turn it into getaway money. We don’t smoke it or give it away.”

  “Obviously,” Ruth says. “This is all about focus. Life got serious lately. Don’t you guys get that?”

  “Also, if anyone goes to jail, it’s Isabel.”

  “That’s two conditions, Magda.”

  “Fine,” Ruth says.

  Maybe it’s supposed to be a joke, maybe not. You never know with Ruth and Magda. They’ve had their own language since way before she showed up. Maybe the only way to find out if they’d actually save her is to get caught.

  “If Matt comes with us, I’ll leave you a signal.” Ruth holds up the Coney Island lighter. “I’ll drop this by the curb if it’s all good.”

  The bell is ringing and the last kids are shuffling towards the school building, but Charlie is still swinging his hammer with his back to
the world. Their world. The one they’re about to grab ahold of. Finally the picture of Isabel’s living room disappears from her mind and the sky above her opens up.

  “With money we can buy a van for you guys,” she says, “a houseboat for me. Whatever we want.”

  “And that would be the point.” Magda stands up. “How are we gonna turn Matt’s weed into money?”

  “This is not the time for details, Magda. This is jump-now-think-later time.”

  “I think we should find a way to blackmail Danny into taking it off us,” Ruth says.

  “Danny, your mom’s boyfriend?” Isabel sits up. “I like him; he’s nice to Henry.”

  “People thought the last one was nice, remember? We’re not doing that again, not on my watch. The guy is in the middle of my life. He deserves what he gets. Opportunity knocks, women.”

  “Move over, Saint Magdalene the Decision Maker. Ruth is the new mastermind.”

  “I thought it was you, Jump-Now-Think-Later O’Sullivan.”

  twelve

  MAGDA STANDS IN Matt’s side yard, holding his Coney Island lighter and actually appreciating the beauty of the plan. For the beginning of a career in housebreaking, this is an excellent choice. It’s county on this side of 25A. Not Highbone cops, real cops, but like Charlie said, Matt can’t call them. The moon isn’t up yet, which is why it’s a good night to see a meteor shower. Magda can just make out the truck-tire planters and the yard Virgin on the lawn next door. Matt’s bathroom window is open, but it’s also eight feet off the ground, with a little basement window below it.

  “Only one of us can go in,” she says. “I’ll lift you up.”

  “No fucking way, Magda.” Isabel backs away from her. “I’m not going in there by myself.”

  “Really, Bonnie Parker? Now you’re chickenshit? Fine,” Isabel says. “I’ll go. Kneel down and let me get on your shoulders. I’ll let you in the back door.”