Stray

by Stacey Goldblatt

  Standing next to the window, we kiss for a long time—long enough for the room to darken another few shades.

  After about fifteen minutes of tender kisses, we set up a picnic on the blanket and feed each other moist chocolate cupcakes amid candlelight and Otis Redding.

  Carver gets closer to me and rests his head in my lap. My fingers comb through the length of his soft hair. Even though we’re not kissing, this is the closest I’ve felt to him. “Can I ask you something personal?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why did you choose a dragonfly—you know, for your tattoo?”

  “Ah, that.” He wipes a smear of cupcake from my chin and licks it off his finger. Pixie pirouettes. “I’ve always thought it was cool how dragonflies could inhabit water and air. Their coloring changes as they reflect and refract light. It’s just a cool reminder that we’re not stagnant. I don’t ever want to become one thing, you know? There’re too many possibilities.”

  I lean down to kiss him and then pull back to glance at my watch: twenty-five minutes left. I should leave in fifteen to be safe. Carver sees me looking at my watch, takes it off my wrist, and places it in the enormous duffel bag. “I won’t let you be late.” Inspired by the dragonfly, I let the light of Carver’s words inside me, trusting him.

  We shift to lie on the blanket side by side. The candle flickers, the cider fizzes, and the soulful voice of Otis Redding swells throughout the room. The little dragonfly on Carver’s ankle comes to life and soars above us, meeting Pixie somewhere between my heart and my head as Carver and I meld into a kiss.

  Tonight, our kissing becomes more urgent, less tidy. We allow our tongues to wet each other’s lips. I want to know how it feels for him to touch me. I stopped him the other night, but I am in control and know how far I want to go with him. I reach down to the hem of my T-shirt and wiggle it up over my head. Carver arches back to look at me. His hand reaches inside the worn fabric of my bra and cups my breast, his thumb tracing its roundness.

  He leans into me. “You’re beautiful, Natalie.” He brings his mouth back to mine. His hand stays on the bare warmth of my chest, circling until it freezes because there is a sound.

  Noise.

  An unexpected drumbeat that becomes a steady thump, thump, thump of footsteps echoing up the stairs.

  We pull back from each other. I become a panic of movement, searching for my shirt.

  “Who is up here?” It’s the voice of a man.

  I am going to die. Right here. Right now.

  Carver leans over and blows out the candle, and the smell of smoke lingers in the room with us like a guilty third person. Unable to find my shirt, I wrap my arms around myself. The doorway frames the tall burly shadows of two police officers.

  To a dog, limbo and boredom are excruciating states of being.

  —Michael Kaplan, The Manifesto of Dog

  “Miss Kaplan?” Officer DeMarzo says, aiming the beam of his flashlight at me. He recognizes me because his malamute, Randy, is a regular client at the clinic. Both officer and dog are intimidating. Neither is the kind you would approach to offer a scratch under the chin. The other officer, who looks like a huge English mastiff, scrunched face and all, stands silent with his arms crossed over his chest.

  Officer DeMarzo looks at Carver and practically growls. “Who are you?”

  “Carver Reed,” he answers, gently draping the blanket over my bare shoulders. I sidle into it, pulling it over my chest.

  “Follow me,” Officer DeMarzo says to us. Panic curls around every bone in my body. What was I thinking?

  “Um, Officer?” I say.

  “What?”

  “Can you give me a minute?”

  “Why?” he asks forcefully. “You want time to hide something?”

  “Um, no. I need to find my shirt.”

  “We’ll be waiting downstairs,” he says. “Son, you come with me.” Carver follows.

  I find my wadded-up T-shirt that I tried to fling romantically over my head, and squirm into it.

  This is bad. Grandma is going to be waiting for me. What time is it? I don’t have my watch! Mom’s head will explode if she has to bail me out of jail… if she’s even willing to bail me out.

  I walk down the stairs to the front door and meet Carver and the officers outside on the lawn.

  “This is a vacant house,” Officer DeMarzo says, tucking his thumbs into his belt loops. “You are trespassing, a violation of penal code 602.”

  “The door was unlocked,” lies Carver.

  “Son, if we used that logic, anyone would be entitled to a parked car with keys in the ignition.” He shakes his head. “Doesn’t work.” He furrows his dark bushy unibrow and says, “Come with me.” We follow him toward the police car. Officer Mastiff walks behind us. My mother is going to chain me to my bed when she finds out about this. And what if she finds out I was topless?

  We’re ushered into the backseat of the police car. There are no handles on the doors to allow escape—not that we would. Something like chicken wire separates the backseat from the front. We’re caged in.

  Officer Mastiff stays with us in the cop car while Officer DeMarzo goes inside the house. Checking for contraband, I assume.

  “What are we going to do?” I whisper to Carver, looking straight ahead.

  “Just stay calm,” Carver whispers back. He seems composed, like there’s no need to panic.

  And there is need to panic.

  I am panicking! It is completely appropriate for me to panic, because we are in a police car! My grandmother will be waiting for me! My mom is going to kill me!

  “What’s the penalty for trespassing?” I ask. Neither Officer Mastiff nor Carver answers. Maybe because trespassing is a one-way ticket into prison! Oh my God! I’ll have to go to prison. I’ll be behind in school. Wait, I’ll probably be expelled from school and forced to go to reform school or something when I get out of prison. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “Quiet back there!” Officer Mastiff barks.

  Officer DeMarzo comes out of the house with the ginormous duffel bag. He throws it into the trunk, gets into the car, and puts on his seat belt. I don’t think I’m blinking. One cannot panic and blink at the same time.

  I don’t know what’s worse, making Grandma wait at the senior center or being taken in to the police station to be sentenced to prison. I think I’m hyperventilating. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. “Officer DeMarzo?” I sound croaky.

  “What?” he asks as he scribbles something down on a clipboard.

  “I’m supposed to pick up my grandmother right now at the senior center. My mom doesn’t have the car to pick her up.”

  Carver reaches over and places his hand on my knee. It’s okay, he mouths.

  We arrive in the parking lot of the senior center before Grandma even comes out. Despite some law-breaking, I’m early for once. When Grandma shuffles out the doors and into the parking lot, Officer DeMarzo gets out and helps her into the passenger seat, forcing Officer Mastiff to scrunch into the backseat with us. Carver removes his hand from my knee.

  As we drive, Grandma asks Officer DeMarzo if he’s read us our rights.

  “We only do that if we have to question the detained, ma’am,” he answers. “There’s no need to question these two in the back. They were clearly trespassing.”

  “My granddaughter is an honest girl!” Grandma says. Obviously, she has a distorted view of me.

  Officer DeMarzo pulls into the parking lot of the police station and leads us into a hallway with about a hundred light fixtures, each bulb weighing in at a blinding one thousand watts. Grandma and Officer DeMarzo walk into one room while Officer Mastiff leads me and Carver to another disturbingly bright room, furnished with a bench seat the length of a crosswalk.

  With each hand, Officer Mastiff points to opposite ends of the bench. “There and there,” he says. Carver sits at the end closest to the door; I sit at the other end. “No talking.” This must be the anticonspiracy room. No on
e would dare whisper, let alone conspire, with Officer Mastiff keeping watch.

  I think I could actually pee in my pants, I’m so scared.

  Officer DeMarzo arrives and calls Carver out of the room. Carver turns back to me as he leaves, and he no longer looks calm but instead shuffles out like he’s going to be struck with a cattle prod. Officer Mastiff remains in the room, standing in front with his arms crossed. As if I’m a threat.

  Finally, enough time has passed for me to accept my possible prison term for what it may be: an opportunity to regroup. Jazz musician John Coltrane got his life together after being in drug rehab, and rehab is probably even worse than prison because you’re overcoming an addiction and you’re confined. I’ll just be confined. Coltrane got out of rehab and went on to rise to the top of his art, becoming the most imitated jazz saxophonist known to date. Grandma can testify to this, since together we witnessed it on A&E’s Biography.

  If there was hope for Coltrane, there has to be hope for me, right? I mean, I don’t even have a drug problem. I may need to start playing an instrument, but I’ll have time to do this in prison, since there won’t be any dogs there. Wait. I think there are therapy dogs or something. Maybe I can claim insanity and be entitled to a therapy dog.

  Officer DeMarzo comes in and leads me into another room, furnished with a desk and two chairs. All the inspiration of the John Coltrane story fades to black when I see the torture device atop the desk: a telephone.

  “Have a seat,” he says. I sit in the discomfort of a plastic chair. Officer DeMarzo leans back against the edge of the desk, casually crossing one ankle over the other. This is probably not a good time to ask about Randy’s flea allergy and whether the ointment Mom prescribed is working. He stares at me for a minute, and I swear, I feel pins pricking my skin.

  “What is your phone number?” he asks.

  There is nothing worse than what he is about to do.

  I recite my number and he calls my mom.

  “Dr. Kaplan?” He pauses. “This is Officer DeMarzo over at the police station. We have your daughter, Natalie, here.” He pauses again; I think for dramatic effect. “No, she’s not hurt, ma’am.” Guilt. “We picked up your mother, too.” He looks at me and listens. “Oh. Well, no, your mother is here by default, ma’am.” Another pause. “Let me hand the phone over to Natalie so she can tell you why she’s here.”

  Go ahead and just shoot me.

  Numb. Tears form in my eyes, and everything I didn’t do the past sixteen years suddenly contorts into everything I did do this week. Officer DeMarzo, still gripping the phone, holds it out to me.

  I take the receiver and hold it on my lap for a second. I lift the phone, which feels like a twenty-pound weight, to my ear. “Mom?”

  “What. Are. You. Doing. At. The. Police. Station?”

  “I was trespassing.”

  “Where?”

  “In a vacant house.” John Coltrane could have told his mother he was practicing saxophone in a vacant house so he wouldn’t disturb others, and that excuse probably would have flown. Me, I have no reason to be in a vacant house. This is now positively clear.

  “Were you doing drugs?” The question reveals her biggest fear.

  “No, Mom.” I do not mention I was topless.

  “Is Carver with you?” Her tone is rising.

  More evidence against him. “Yes.”

  For a long time there is silence on the other end of the line. It sounds like a hole too deep to dig out of.

  A dog’s fear is often disguised as aggression.

  —Michael Kaplan, The Manifesto of Dog

  A half hour or an hour could’ve passed; I’m not sure. Fear obscures the passing of time. All I know is that I’ve been alone in this bare room for too long. After a while, I hear the muffled voices of a man and a woman talking, then the open yawn of the door. It’s Mom.

  Her eyes are red and swollen. She’s unable to lift her feet; her clogs scuff against the floor. The hair pulled back in her clip is the only evidence of order. She sits in the chair behind the desk.

  “What were you doing in that house?” she asks.

  This is it. I can be scared or I can face this. “Carver and I were talking.”

  “The truth, Natalie. No more bullshit.” Mom just said “bullshit.”

  “It is the truth. Would you rather I say we were downing shots of tequila?”

  “Don’t get smart with me.” She is practically grinding her teeth.

  “Truth? Carver was hiding in the back of the car tonight when I took Grandma to the senior center. I got scared and made him get out of the car. Then, after I dropped off Grandma, I felt like a coward. So I found Carver and we went into the house together.”

  “Why would you do that?” Mom asks, confused. “Why?”

  And I think about it. I think about it enough that embers begin to kindle in my stomach, flames lick their way up to my throat, and I say it in my head until there’s an inferno on the tip of my tongue. “Because normally, I wouldn’t do that. Because being good has gotten me nowhere! You’ve never even told me that you’re proud of me, that you’re happy about the choices I’ve made. You just keep pointing out my imperfections. So I said screw it! Why not earn your disappointment instead?”

  “Natalie.” Mom stands up. “Do not yell at me.”

  I jump to my feet and meet her eye, keeping my voice raised. “If I don’t yell, how else are you going to hear me!”

  I sit back down in my chair, my body arching into a hump. “It’s like whatever I say goes into this catcher’s mitt of yours and gets thrown right back at me. It’s like you keep expecting me to be this person that I’m not. I’m not you, Mom. And I realize I’m not who you want me to be, either. But can’t you listen to me or even try to trust me?”

  I look up at Mom through my tears. She sits down in her chair, stunned. Somehow, we’ve lost each other. This is a woman I used to want to impress; lately, I just want to piss her off.

  “Mom, can you at least acknowledge that I have a brain? I may have lied this past week, but I also used my better judgment. I could easily have smoked pot, had sex, overdosed on wine—”

  Mom raises her hand in protest. “Whoa, wait a minute—”

  “No, Mom, you wait.” Mom purses her lips, crosses her arms over her chest, and nods. “Up until now, you’ve been my compass. I hear your voice say no before mine has the opportunity to speak. I want to know what I sound like. You’ve got to stop suffocating me.”

  “Suffocate?” Mom asks, a pained look flashing across her face. “Do I really suffocate you?”

  “That’s what it feels like.”

  Mom stares at me, unflinching. I wonder if she’s even breathing. Then she shows me a sign of life, uncrossing her arms. “Maybe I’ve made the mistake of making you think I am in charge of everything, including your life. I can own that. What I can’t do, what I won’t do, is let you do whatever you want to do and have you expect me to approve.”

  “I’ve lived with you long enough to know that. I am not asking you to let me do anything I want.” I pull a piece of flaked skin from my thumbnail and think for a minute about what I’m going to say before uttering another word. “Just give me an opportunity to find my boundaries before setting them for me. Like with Carver. Had I listened to you and kept it all professional, I’d never have gotten to know him or know that there’s a side of me that is brave, that I can say no when I’m uncomfortable with something. Can you at least trust that?”

  “I don’t know,” Mom says. “You haven’t been honest with me.”

  “I can be honest with you, Mom. But you have to trust me, too. And maybe you can let me know that I’m okay once in a while. That I’m not just a source of frustration for you.”

  Mom slides out of her chair and kneels down in front of me, placing her hands on my knees. Looking at her, I see the signs of age that have sprouted in the last couple of years. Brushstrokes of thin lines frame her eyes; her skin has ripened like a soft peach. “I a
m proud of you, Natalie. Every time you walk into the clinic, my day is better because you’re there. You are a sensitive, bright, and caring young woman. That’s what I mean when I tell you I love you.”

  Sometimes we don’t realize what we need to hear from someone else until they say it. There’s a little shame in knowing I need my mother to tell me that I’m okay, that she’s proud of me.

  I’m human, though. I bet John Coltrane, as good as he was, needed the applause of an audience. Even dogs need some approval after they’ve retrieved a ball.

  “So what about trusting me?” I ask.

  “As much as I love you, I’m not going to walk out of this room with unabated trust in you. That is going to take time.”

  “Urgh!” I yell, grabbing my head. “Then what is the point of this whole conversation?”

  Mom takes my hands in hers. “The point, Natalie, is that I hear you, okay? You need me to listen, and I am going to do my best to hear you.”

  It’s not perfect, but it’s a start, I guess.

  “What will happen to Carver?” I ask as Mom and I walk out of the small room and into the stark hallway.

  Mom stops us outside the door. “He needs to get his story straight. I spoke to him first and he said it was his idea to go into the house.” He shouldered the blame? “If he plans to stay the rest of the summer, the three of us need to have a long talk.”

  “Mom, it was my fault, too.”

  “I’ll trust you on that one.”

  * * *

  Vernon had to give Mom a ride to the police station, since her car was parked on Juniper. When Mom and I walk into the lobby, Vernon, Grandma, and Carver are waiting.

  Carver arches his eyebrows at me and I do the same, talking back in code but not sure of what we’re saying. Grandma struggles out of her seat, waving Vernon away as he tries to help her.

  The car ride home is still. Carver and I sit in the backseat, on either side of Mom. Grandma sits up front with Vernon. She, too, is quiet. Vernon drops me off at Juniper Street, where the car is parked across from the vacant house.