Little Wrecks

by Meredith Miller

  “Hello, Magdalene. She isn’t home yet. She’s with Ruth. I don’t know where they went.”

  “Oh, when she gets home, could you tell her I called?”

  “Okay, sweetie . . . Magdalene?”

  “Yeah, Mrs. O’Sullivan?”

  “Are you all right? Is everyone all right? I can never tell, Magdalene.”

  “We’re all fine, Mrs. O. It’s really nice that you asked.” Even then, Magda doesn’t choke up.

  “Well,” Mrs. O’Sullivan says, “having daughters is a kind of blindness. You can feel them, but you can’t see anything.”

  For that kind of insight, she committed herself to an institution? It sounds truer than most things to Magda.

  nine

  THE WARRENS’ HOUSE looks to Isabel like a hotel for ghosts. It has history, poetry. You can imagine the people who used to live here. You could write stories about them. The porch is half-shaded by the trees at the edge of the road. There’s a collapsing cardboard box full of docksiders and cable-knit sweaters under the porch swing, and some dead brown leaves trailing from the hanging basket. It’s the abandoned wreck of something Isabel would give anything to have, a house people actually feel and think in.

  “No, seriously, there’s something spooky,” she says. “I can feel it.”

  “All right, Isabel,” Ruth says to her, “just because you read my mind the other day doesn’t mean you’re some kind of gypsywitchclairvoyant. Magda could have gone somewhere.”

  Isabel sits down on the front step.

  “It’s Saturday at two thirty. She didn’t answer this morning and she’s not answering now. If she isn’t with us, where would she be?”

  “Check me if I’m wrong, Isabel, but I think that’s an insulting question. We do all have lives when you’re not there.”

  “I’m just saying, our lives have a pattern. She wasn’t in school yesterday, and she hasn’t called you, right? That’s weird. There’s no Henry, no big bad Professor, nobody. It’s spooky. People do tend to take off and disappear from this house.”

  “Magda wouldn’t leave town without telling me,” Ruth says. “You, maybe, but not me.”

  “Seriously, Ruth. Get off my back, will you?”

  Isabel doesn’t want to leave the Warrens’ house. She wants to go inside while no one’s home and sneak into Professor Warren’s study. She could just pretend to be him, sit at his typewriter and put on one of his sweaters, breathe in the dust from his books. The cops would never find her here.

  “I’ll look in the back,” Ruth says. “Stay here. If something happened and her dad kicked off, she might be hiding. She might come out if it’s just me.”

  After a while Isabel gets tired of waiting and goes around to the back herself. Ruth isn’t there. She tries to hit Magda’s window with some little pebbles but her aim is bad. Twice she hits the bathroom window instead. There is no sign of anyone, but it doesn’t feel empty. It just feels wrong.

  She finds Ruth in the carriage house, lying on top of Mrs. Warren’s things with her eyes half closed. She shines out of the shadows, floating in the dust she’s kicked up. Isabel would like to dress her in something long and beaded from the Attic and sit her on a couch at a party full of poets. She could be the center of something like that, the muse. It’s that way she has of being half in the room, and half somewhere else all the time. Even when you take all her clothes off and touch her, you can tell there is something you’re not getting at.

  “One day I’m going to be able to tell people I slept with you and they’ll be impressed.”

  Ruth doesn’t answer. She’s acting hurt and bitchy, but it doesn’t matter. Years from now she’ll understand that Isabel risked everything for them. She hit back. She lets out a heavy breath and slides her back down the wall next to the door. It’s hard waiting for those two to catch up sometimes.

  Now Ruth’s voice comes rasping out of the shadow. “Where’s the stash? We might as well grab a couple of buds and take them to my house.”

  They walk down the hill and stand waiting to cross 25A. The shadows of moving cars wash over them like waves and Isabel feels that same tugging vertigo you feel in the ocean. The highway sounds like surf, too. At Ruth’s house, Ms. Carter is making baba ghanoush in the kitchen.

  “Let’s go in my room,” Ruth says. “It takes ages for her to screw up the baba ghanoush. She has to concentrate.”

  There doesn’t seem to be a lot to say. They just lie flat on their backs on either side of Ruth’s veil, looking at the ceiling and filling the room with smoke. After a while, Ruth rolls over and pokes the top of her body out from under the veil, reaching for her pastels. “Put some music on.” She pulls a piece of paper out from under her dresser. Isabel looks at the record player for a minute, moves the needle back to the beginning of Horses, and lies down on the floor while Patti Smith growls about Jesus.

  “See,” she says. “There are places in the world where we can say whatever we want and people will pay us for it.”

  “Shhhhh. I need to get this down before the picture goes out of my head. It’s important.”

  Isabel cranes her neck over to try to see Ruth’s paper, and the phone rings in the distant kitchen. A minute later, Ms. Carter knocks and opens the door without waiting for an answer. Her eyes are big and she hasn’t wiped the eggplant off her hands.

  “Something happened,” she says, in one of those totally flat, emotionless voices adults use when someone dies or breaks a limb or leaves them for someone else.

  Isabel turns the record player down. Ruth just stares at the eggplant smears on the doorjamb.

  “Danny’s at the hospital. I have to go. Isabel, come with me and I can drop you across 25A. Ruth? I’ll be back later, okay?”

  “What happened?” Ruth is using the voice, too.

  “He was driving and something went wrong with his brakes. They called his parents, but his friend Sal called me.”

  When Isabel looks over from tying her sneakers, Ruth is drawing on the palm of her left hand with the blue pastel in her right. She says good-bye without looking up.

  Outside, Isabel walks around to the passenger side of Ms. Carter’s Pinto. She’s never been in it without Ruth before.

  “Is Danny gonna be okay, Ms. Carter?”

  “I don’t know, Isabel. I don’t even know what I’m going to do when I get there.” She says it like she forgot she’s talking to a kid, like Isabel might have some advice or something comforting to say. She still hasn’t washed the eggplant off her hands.

  Shit. What if he’s dead? Is that what just happened?

  The record is playing on in Ruth’s room. “Redondo Beach” now. Patti’s voice comes from the open window. “Down by the ocean, it was so dismal. Women all standing with shock on their faces.”

  ten

  ON MONDAY MORNING, Magdalene is alone in the science hallway when someone grabs her from behind. She elbows him as hard as she can in the stomach. Her body just does it without involving her brain. By the time she turns around, Charlie is doubled over, going, “What the hell!” in a voice that would be shouting if he had any air to shout with.

  “Jesus, Magdalene, I was only playin’.”

  “Not funny, Charlie. What do you want?”

  “Do I have to want something? Let’s go smoke one and sign in after homeroom.” They are in the crowd outside the girls’ bathroom. Classes haven’t started yet.

  “No thanks. Next question?”

  “Okay, actually, I’m not playing.” And he pushes her into the corner by the bathroom door. There is so much noise and confusion in the hallway that people don’t have to notice. Magda looks past his shoulder and takes a breath.

  “What do you want, then?” Her eyes fix on the banks of light above him.

  “Right, Magda, I’m saying this to you ’cause you’re the least girly girl out of the three of you.”

  “Oh, excellent, Charlie. That’s great. Nice to see you, too.”

  “What is wrong with you today?�
� He growls out the words so no one else can hear them. “If you wanna know, you’re actually sexy. I’ve discussed it with a committee of guys. You know, as part of a list. Tough sexy, that’s what we said.”

  “Charlie, I don’t care what you jerk off to, I really don’t. Spare me. None of us are as clueless as Isabel. That’s why she’s the one fucking you.”

  “Right. We are about to start over.” He brings his face closer to hers. “Someone ripped off Matt Kerwin’s stash. Weird, don’tcha think?”

  “Charlie, you already told us about this. How stoned were you? Congratulations, good job. I’m not helping you move the weed if that’s what you’re after.”

  She isn’t even shaking. Stuff like this doesn’t even make the scale of scary anymore.

  “It wasn’t me, Magda. I think you know that.”

  “You know what, Charlie? I don’t need your ideas. I have my own. Anyway, you should be happy, ’cause whoever ripped off Matt Kerwin is so dead.”

  “Yeah, you have ideas. I know you’re the one in charge. It was your idea, wasn’t it?”

  “Think about it, Charlie. What would I do with Matt’s weed? Where would I sell it without anyone noticing?” This is so true it almost makes Magda laugh to say it.

  “Tell your little friends, Warren. If it turns out to be you guys, you are worse than dead.”

  Then she is leaning in the corner of the bathroom alone, and she can’t remember walking away from Charlie or coming through the door. Everything washes out of her, and she feels hollow and shaky. Seems like this is the thing that’s going to make her cry, which is totally ridiculous, considering. She almost laughs again.

  While she hides in a stall, the bathroom fills up with cigarette smoke then empties out again for homeroom. It isn’t Charlie, or the weed, or Charlie’s threats. It’s the thing that happened in her body when he grabbed her, the way it just took over and reacted. If they were alone it wouldn’t have mattered. She wouldn’t have been strong enough or fast enough. There is a picture made of bruises on her body, rising up from her blank skin hours, even days, later. Ten times a day her insides just drop away and leave her like a tunnel with the wind blowing through it.

  She cries and pulls her own hair and hits the back of her head against the wall behind the toilet. She is so angry it chokes her, and she sobs and coughs until she spits up everything in her lungs and wipes her mouth with her sleeve.

  Then she has to sign in late after all.

  In the parking lot after school, Magda and Isabel stand for a few minutes without saying anything.

  “Where’s Ruth?” Magda finally says.

  “She left at lunchtime. Danny got in some kind of accident on Saturday. Didn’t she call you?”

  “I haven’t really been getting the phone. Is Danny okay?”

  “Well, he’s home from the hospital. Ruth was really freaked, though. Why aren’t you the one who knows all this?”

  “I was . . . I can’t always be the one holding you guys up, Isabel. Ruth needs to grow up.”

  “She seemed to be taking it really badly, considering how much she hates Danny.”

  “Look, Isabel, Charlie kind of knows.”

  “Kind of knows what?”

  “He’s pissed off. He knows someone took Matt’s weed and he’s pretty sure it was us. He got a little intense with me this morning.”

  “And you forgot to tell me, Magdalene?” Isabel shouts. “Charlie wants to kill us and you didn’t think you needed to mention it?”

  “I’ve been a little taken up with trying to clean up your mess. Sorry.”

  “Well, he won’t really do anything. Not to my friends.”

  “Are you serious?” Magda kicks at a Coke can ring, then picks it up and puts it in her pocket. “He can do whatever he wants. He can jump one of us from behind a bush and cut us up. He can strangle us and dump us in a marsh in Queens. Who’s gonna say anything?”

  They both shuffle their feet and cast their eyes around, stuck in the parking lot with groups of kids walking away from them in all directions. Magda can feel the air stretching thin between them. The two of them are held together by some kind of centrifugal force but they each want to fly off.

  “Anyway, I thought you were over him. I thought stealing Matt’s weed was your big ‘Screw you, Charlie.’”

  Isabel doesn’t answer. She is waiting. She wants Magda to tell her what to do next. Does she even realize that’s what she’s doing?

  “I need a walk,” Magda says. “You go ahead.”

  “Where you going, Saint Magdalene the Mysterious?”

  “I don’t know, Isabel. Heaven? Hell? California? I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  There are no lights in the front windows of the Hancocks’ house, but Magda knows the way around back from when she used to come with her mother. Mrs. Hancock will be in the den, the one with the harbor view.

  There. Right there on the back step, her mother stood once, trying not to cry and asking if she could come in for a rum and Coke. Mrs. Hancock laughed and held the door open, and Magda’s mother told her to play outside. Now it’s Magda knocking, looking less perfect but still trying not to cry. Her mother could give a situation like that some kind of tragic beauty. Magda’s desperation is just scruffy.

  There’s some fumbling before the door opens, and then Mrs. Hancock gasps and puts a hand to her chest.

  “Oh my God, you look like her. You scared the crap out of me, Magdalene.”

  She’s drunk.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hancock. I just . . .”

  “Well, get in here. Have you heard from your mother?”

  “No. I just . . .”

  “I’m pouring you a whiskey. Don’t argue.”

  They’re in the den now, and Mrs. Hancock waves at the couch that faces the bay window.

  “Um . . . I don’t think you’re supposed to, Mrs. Hancock.”

  “Nonsense. You look terrible, and it’s my job to feed drinks to Warren women when they need them. Anyway, I can’t drink alone. Women who drink whiskey by themselves are outside the pale; surely you’ve learned that by now.”

  Looks like she drinks alone plenty. Magda takes the glass, though. It’s real scotch, with an unpronounceable name on the bottle.

  “Women who drink alone end up in asylums,” Mrs. Hancock says. “You’ve stepped right into the middle of a Tennessee Williams play, sweetie. Grab a chair and have a drink while you wait for act two.”

  Jesus, this was a bad idea. She waves at the couch again and Magda sits down. All of a sudden Mrs. Hancock looks surprised, staring at her like she just appeared out of thin air.

  “What are you doing here?” she says.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hancock. I just . . . um . . . I didn’t know who to talk to.”

  “Ssshhh! Listen,” she says. “Hear that?”

  All Magda can hear is the boats in the harbor, riggings tinkling against aluminum masts in the breeze. Then there’s a creak, maybe the house settling. It’s old, older than Magda’s house, even.

  “I wanted it, Magdalene. I wanted it so badly, the view out this window and the sounds from the harbor and the creaky old house full of the history of people who have owned this two-bit town for generations. I grew up in South Highbone, did you know that? It was different then, but still, no harbor view.”

  “It kind of presses on you, though. Doesn’t it?” Magda takes a sip of the whiskey and tries not to cough. “The history, I mean.”

  “When you knocked I was thinking about The Great Gatsby.” She points across the water. “Look over there at Carter’s Bay. It’s like West Egg and East Egg, right? Except there’s no one over there on the lawn, longing to reach across to me, that’s for sure. Not like I want that. I was just thinking about all the reasons I wouldn’t make a good Daisy.”

  Magda has no idea what’s she’s talking about. She tried to read The Great Gatsby once, but it was written like a grocery list.

  “Your mother,” Mrs. Hancock says, “you know, she might h
ave made a good Daisy. Women in novels like that are never too solid. They just hover, looking ethereal with all their thoughts halfway out of sight. They’re always revealing that there’s something they haven’t revealed. They have to fade away when you reach out for them. It’s required.”

  “Well, yeah,” Magda says. “My mom is good at that last part.”

  “When people reach out for me, I’m right there. Men don’t find that attractive.” She looks at Magda and gets the surprised face again. “Why are you here, Magdalene? Is there something you wanted to tell me?”

  “I wanted to ask you . . . I mean, I thought maybe I could talk to you. I don’t know, Mrs. Hancock. It’s just my dad and Henry at home, you know?”

  “Let’s see,” she says. “Someone hurt you. A man. Boy, whichever. Physically, or just break your heart?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Not rocket science, sweetie. You might get to walk around dressed like a boy till ten o’clock on school nights, smoking cigarettes with holes in your jeans, but I guess the other things pretty much stay the same.”

  “Physically,” Magda says. Really it’s both but she doesn’t say that.

  “Well, chances are it’ll happen again. I know I’m supposed to say something comforting, but what would be the point of that? The important thing, sweetie, is not to let the frayed edges show. Tuck things in when they start coming undone.” She reaches for the whiskey bottle.

  “I’m trying that, Mrs. Hancock, but I’m so mad. I just want to hurt someone.”

  “Drink up. Wearing it on the outside where people can see it just makes you look like a victim. Do that and they just keep coming at you. Trust me.”

  Mrs. Hancock leans over and pours more whiskey into Magda’s glass. Is she gonna remember this in the morning? She’s wasted.

  “Yeah but, why should I have to tuck it all in?” Magda says. “I didn’t do anything; why do I have to hide it?”

  “It’s the deal we make, Magda. Hide it or starve or wind up like one of those junkie girls who dance in the Lagoon. Those are your choices. It’s a no-brainer, honey. Come here.”