Ohio

by Stephen Markley

  When Bethany heard the cries coming from Lisa’s room, surely she’d pictured a boy. Not Stacey Moore with her head between her daughter’s legs, Lisa practically yanking fistfuls of hair out by the roots of her blond. They never so much as heard the floor creak. It was one of those button locks that you can pop open by sticking a penny or a paper clip in and turning.

  When Bethany snatched Lisa’s arm it made a sound like a single clap echoing in an auditorium. As Stacey scrambled to pull on her clothes, the panic was blinding. Bethany yanked Lisa out into the living room with an indifference to her physical well-being that seemed alien for a mother. Bethany threw her onto the couch, screaming, and not just with fury but with a panic of her own, like she was calling for help, trapped inside a flooding prison with the water bubbling up, and it amplified Stacey’s fear. She followed them, and Bethany barked her into a nearby chair. Lisa was still naked, and she pulled an afghan around her torso. Face red, spit foaming at the corners of her mouth, Bethany could have acted in a B movie about a demon-possessed woman. It would have been funny except Stacey had never been more frightened in her life. What do you think you’re doing?! was Bethany’s refrain, but she wasn’t employing it as a question. She wailed it into Lisa’s face, clenching and unclenching her hands until the blood turned them purple.

  Stacey tried to look at Lisa like, Let’s just leave. Let’s go to my house, but Lisa only stared at the floor, catatonic. In all the time she’d known Lisa, she’d never seen her like that. No quick retort, no rebellion, no fire at all. She just stared at the floor and accepted her mother’s screams.

  Bethany took Lisa by her ear and tried to yank their gazes together. “Look at me!” she shrieked, and Stacey felt the fear that precedes true violence. The breath in the moment before the knife pops the muscle and slides through.

  Stacey blurted out, “We’re sorry.” Two frightened little words.

  Bethany’s head swiveled to Stacey, as if remembering she was there. She stalked across the living room, and Stacey hated how she shrank into the chair.

  “Don’t you talk to me. Don’t you ever talk to me. Who are you? What are you doing here?” An adult had never laid a hand on her before. Her parents never spanked her brothers, let alone their daughter. She just had no frame of reference for it. So when Bethany snatched her hair in one hand and snapped her head back, she couldn’t understand it. She remained limp, and felt her throat exposed, so much that she feared the woman’s teeth.

  “Who are you?” she repeated.

  Then she clamped a thumb and index finger around Stacey’s nipple, the right one, and pinched so viciously, she cried out.

  “Stay away from her. Stay away. Stay away. Stay away.” She barked that over and over, squeezing Stacey’s nipple harder until the pain was a bright heat in her entire breast. And she just sat there letting her do it. She’d think about that for years. She was taller and stronger than Bethany. She could have smacked her, thrown that bitch across the room if she’d wanted. But adult Stacey would think of that later. Right then, she only knew she’d done something awful and irrevocable. This punishment was simply the beginning.

  “If you ever come near my daughter again,” Bethany hissed. “You will be so, so sorry.”

  Lisa had started crying silently, but still she didn’t move. This was not even Lisa, Stacey would later decide. This vacant, idle-eyed girl was some reversion to a younger self, and the way Lisa sat, melted and melded into the couch, still haunted her.

  Bethany’s knuckles bore down harder. Like she was trying to rip her breast off. She leaned into Stacey’s ear and whispered beneath the sound of her daughter sniffing back tears and the refrigerator gurgling loudly in the kitchen. “Go near her again, I’ll set you on fire, you little whore.”

  Then she pulled Stacey from the chair by her hair and that savage grip on her breast and threw her to the floor.

  On the drive home—after Bethany threatened to tell her parents if Stacey said a word about this to anyone—she had to pull over. She was shaking so badly. She couldn’t complete a breath—a full-fledged panic attack. What it’s like to understand your own death the moment before the darkness. She stopped on 229, just west of the retirement home, opened the door, and vomited onto the side of the road. Her vision glittered, and she tried to listen to the crickets and not pass out. To this day, she had dreams of lying immobile as that woman poured gasoline on her.

  Bethany took away her daughter’s cell phone, and Stacey couldn’t even talk to Lisa at school. A handful of teachers knew Mrs. Kline or went to their church. The next week she and Lisa met in the library during lunch, away from the study tables, back in a quiet row of books. They sat on the floor hugging their knees together, like they were in elementary school. Lisa played at the fraying threads on her wrist, running her finger under them, plucking them like guitar strings.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. Stacey didn’t reply. Her breast still had a dark blue bruise on it surrounding the nipple like a halo. “We need to be careful for a while.”

  “How long is a while? Because after this summer . . .”

  Stacey would be in Springfield and Lisa in Virginia. Not the farthest distance two people had ever spanned, but at eighteen it felt like a continent.

  Lisa looked at her, for the first and only time Stacey could ever remember, with anger. “She’s sending me to a counselor.”

  “What kind of counselor?”

  “What kind do you think.”

  Stacey didn’t know what to feel. Part of her wanted to blame Lisa for just sitting there, for her cowardice, but who was she to talk. The relief that Bethany hadn’t told her parents was total. The panic attack had subsided but not the image of her mom taking Bethany’s call and bursting into horrified tears.

  “You know I don’t even know if she’s my biological mother,” Lisa said. “Her story’s that my dad went back to Vietnam, but she doesn’t even have a picture of him. For all I know I could be adopted. ‘Han’ might be some bullshit she made up. Shit, I’ve never seen the blood work.” She picked at a scab on her hand, scratched away the gunky red crust like a lotto ticket. “All I know is I’ve hated her for so long. I figure you can’t feel that for your real mother.”

  “This is crazy,” Stacey whispered.

  “Maybe it was.” Then Lisa got to her feet and walked away. It was the last conversation they ever had in person.

  Lisa left just before graduation. Stacey had to hear about what she’d done from Kaylyn. When she wrote to tell Lisa how furious she was that she hadn’t said good-bye or told her this insane plan, Lisa wrote back, It was too complicated. I knew it would be too hard unless I just left. I’m sorry.

  When Stacey wrote to ask her if she should save up money for a plane ticket, that after freshman year was over, she could visit her wherever she ended up, Lisa wrote back, I don’t think that’s a good idea.

  Stacey felt shame that, at first, she was faking her own broken heart. It was complicated, but she was relieved Lisa had left. With her gone, Stacey’s family would never find out. With the temptation of Lisa Han removed, she could get on with her life: go to college, meet a boy, marry, have children, be happy. She honestly thought this was for the best.

  It was only a few months later, when she got to school, that the fury and the sadness and the hurt she’d sublimated began to bubble up. No eighteen-year-old is equipped to understand how love can inspire so much shame, so much self-loathing. Even after nearly a decade she could summon the anguish, like a rotting tooth you feel with each bite of a meal, once it dawned on her that she would probably never see Lisa again. She wanted one phone call, one opportunity to scream at her, to vent everything. But Lisa never gave her the chance. And this all led to darker thoughts. At first it was only the bereavement of a breakup and the anxiety of a secret, but that lonely first year at Wittenberg, Stacey tested the hanging rod in the closet of her dorm room. It was high and felt sturdy enough to hold her. If she got the length of the cord right, her feet wou
ldn’t be able to touch the floor. That she’d considered this seriously seemed impossible now, but that was the corner she found herself in: so deeply terrified of what she would never be able to get away from or suppress, something her family would never understand. She’d have to choose between them and her sanity, and some days the rod in the closet felt like the easiest option. Especially now that the one person in her life who understood had left her for anywhere else, for distant lands and climes.

  * * *

  Mr. Clifton bought the round. They sat in a booth away from the pool table, and she caught him up on her story as fast as she could, answering backward. Yes, Columbus. Catching up with some old friends on the way home. Let the night get away from me. Michigan. Graduate school. Transnational Ecological Catastrophe in the Context of the Global Novel. An explanation of what that meant. All the while wondering—since she wouldn’t have the time now to track down Bill—how to ask him about Lisa. Before his retirement, Mr. Clifton had been one of the most beloved teachers at the school. She’d only had him for the one music requirement, but it endeared him to her forever.

  “You know, it’s amazing. I’ll never get over it,” he said, sweeping a hand enthusiastically before tucking it back into the handle of his mug. “I see some of you kids I had in class years and years ago, and I can never believe the way you grow into yourselves as adults. Thirty years of teaching, and it still makes me want to cry tears of joy every time. It’s really an incredible gift to be able to see that. Especially a young woman like you who had so much potential.”

  “Then it’s probably okay to tell you that during your class I spent most of my time writing notes to Ben Harrington.”

  His laugh carried across the bar, and she imagined it filtering into the streets and out into the gloaming country.

  “Oh my gosh. You were always so spicy, Ms. Moore. You were so terrific to have in class I would have let you get away with anything.” His laughter receded as he remembered what this meant. “I’d forgotten you and Ben were sweethearts. I’m sorry. So much tragedy these last few years.”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of unbelievable.” In order to change the subject, she said, “I should also mention that I don’t write notes to guys anymore. I came out.”

  “Came out?”

  “You know, came out.” For some reason she twirled her index fingers.

  He brightened. “Did you now? Good for you, Stacey Moore. Good for the people around you.” She thanked him. “Are you seeing anyone? How did your folks take it?”

  “In between wonderful women right now, but yeah. My dad’s just my dad—I could probably show up with a dead hooker in my trunk, and he would beam at my resourcefulness with a club hammer. But my mom really gets out there and tries to change people’s minds. She’s made it like a full-time project at her new church. I give them credit.”

  He really did look overjoyed by this. She decided he’d already had a few drinks tonight somewhere, but he was still such a heart-on-the-sleeve man.

  She left out the part about her brother Patrick, although Mr. Clifton surely had an idea. Dread rippled through her, and she was grateful for the buzz of the beer.

  “You know.” He twisted his coaster. “My father once told me that it’s on other people to let go of their fear and prejudice. And this was a man who had his shop burned to the ground because he tried opening in a white neighborhood in Cincinnati. It’s their problem, he said, and that’s on them. But he also told me that it’s on you to give people a chance to change.” He looked at her quizzically. “Dan Eaton was your class, right?”

  “Yep. I heard he’s home too.”

  “Take Dan’s dad, Paul. When my wife and I first moved in next door, that guy looked at me like the whole world had lost its damn mind. That real estate lady didn’t show me this crazy cracker ’Nam vet I was going to have to neighbor with. But I made an effort. Then again, I didn’t have much choice because we were about the only black family for forty miles it seemed. But I heard it was his birthday and got him a bottle of whiskey. And then he made an effort. And then we were all just good. By the time Rosa passed away, there was no one . . .” He stopped, smiled into his beer. “Though obviously, these are different experiences we’re talking about.”

  She raised her glass. “No way. Inspirational music teachers, issues of queerness and race—we’re writing our own really condescending movie right now.”

  He laughed and cracked his glass into hers.

  * * *

  When she was home from college the summer after her freshman year she ran into Ben Harrington and his mom at Kroger’s (epicenter of New Canaan stop-and-chat time sucks). She and Ben decided to meet for lunch at Friendly’s, the high school hangout chain rival to Vicky’s. Stacey had only meant to catch up, to sit across from this old flame of hers and see how he was growing into the world.

  “I’m writing weird songs,” he explained, shy eyes darting. She was reminded that she loved how uncomfortable he was about his music and ambition. “My plan is to get five songs together that I’m really proud of and release an EP, and then hopefully get a full album within a couple of years. Part of my thing is I’m such a tinkerer. If a song’s not perfect I stay awake at night biting my nails.”

  “You were always a worrier.”

  “Not when I was with you! And that’s not flattery either—you just chilled me out.”

  “You’re flirting with me,” she warned.

  His eyes were summer sun dappling off a dirty river. “I’m not trying to get you out to the Brew, but let me have a little flirting, Stace.”

  He did look impossibly handsome.

  His skin had cleared up, and he’d grown his hair out and kept brushing the thick blond locks off his brow. She wasn’t sure what clicked in her at that moment, but he just had this way about him, this quiet empathy, and before she knew what she was doing, she said, “I’ve got something sort of crazy to tell you,” and spilled the entire story about Lisa. He listened, and as she got to the end, taming the conclusion, leaving out the part about the night Bethany found them, his face remained too even, his disappointment transparently subdued. He’d surely thought the Brew was at least a possibility, and there she was putting her guts on the table about the woman she’d fallen in love with.

  “Holy fucking shit,” he said, processing with a rapid flutter of his surfer eyes. “Does Ashcraft know?”

  “No one does. I don’t think Lisa’s ever told anyone.”

  He’d always had this habit of removing everything from his pockets when he sat down. His wallet, phone, keys, and a small notebook lay on the table in a neat pile. The notebook was creased and handled to the point where duct tape held the binding together. He swallowed air trying to say something.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but . . .” While his friends had a way of keeping their inner selves ensconced under layers of jock masculine subterfuge, Ben had always been without guile. Quick to laugh and quick to cry. Sensitive in a way that would have left him exposed and vulnerable if he’d been anyone else in their school. When he left for college, he wept openly even though he was the one breaking up with her, and Stacey had to bite the inside of her cheek to get her eyes a bit misty so he wouldn’t think her heartless. “I heard from her a while back. Or I guess I didn’t hear from her, but she friended me on that thing—MySpace or whatever. Her profile said she was in Vietnam . . .”

  “Sure. I heard something like that.”

  “But that doesn’t make it any less fucked. She’ll be back at some point.”

  Stacey shook her head. “I don’t think she’s ever coming back. And I don’t care if she does.” She twisted a napkin so she’d have something to do with her hands. She blurted out, “I told my family.”

  “And?” he asked, after she said nothing further. “I wouldn’t even believe it if you told me your mom and dad don’t support you.”

  “You know—Patrick, though.”

  “He’ll come around.”

  She laug
hed without meaning to. “Yeah, it’s just—”

  At that point, she’d had what she now considered the hardest year of her life. She’d left for Wittenberg with this shock, this anger at the person she cared for most in the world. It made her feel the blood in her brain. She hadn’t been able to understand that she was 1) depressed and 2) gay. That sounded absurd, but there it was. She’d spent a year with Lisa, and still she tried to date men when she got to college. Still she clung to this idea that Lisa had been a special situation, a fluke, a temptation now removed. Simultaneously, she was “losing her faith,” not even realizing it was happening until she was deep within the throes of an antireligious conversion, understanding the infantile reasoning behind the fairy tales that girded the dogma of her ancestors. It created a sense of such loss, of mourning a thing she cherished, of flailing for something prescriptive to hold on to. When she stopped going to church there was a hole in every Sunday, and a tide of anxiety would come rolling in. So she sat around her freshman year feeling sad more or less all the time, getting a reputation as an ice queen, ignored by her roommate and uninterested in anything but old pictures of the people she missed. She spent one tortured spring day deleting Lisa from her life. Deleting her from AOL Instant Messenger, deleting the pictures of them from her computer, shredding the hard copies. All that stuff she should have been too old for.

  She wrung the napkin and looked to Ben, wondering if she could trust him with this. “When I told my mom, we were sitting on the couch folding laundry. She was going on about something, and I was sitting there—” Do not cry in Friendly’s. “Thinking about how I would wait until I got back to Wittenberg in the fall, and if I still felt this way. If I still felt like . . .” She swallowed her tears, but it did no good. “If I still felt like killing myself, I would be allowed to go ahead and do it.” Ben didn’t flinch at this; he held the blond stubble of his jaw and listened. “And then I was holding a pair of Matt’s shorts and just thought, ‘Are you kidding me, Stacey? Just tell her. If you’re making a promise to yourself like that, you at least have to try to tell her.’ So I did. I just said, ‘Mom, I think I’m gay.’ ” She laughed and wiped at tears. “And then I corrected myself and said, ‘I mean, I know I am.’ ”