by Barbara Bell
Now I think I’m going to throw up. Now all I can do is lie across the backseat of the Taurus shaking again.
I wake myself up moaning. I think my body must be one big bruise. Like some kind of drunk, I get myself into the front seat and check the clock. It’s about five. I change clothes in the manner of some kind of remedial nutcase. I slap on my new hair, then a pair of sunglasses. Why didn’t I add “bottle of Gatorade” to my list?
Then I drive off as though I’m in a Ford, for God’s sakes.
Imagine it. Me in a family car.
After being caught in rush-hour gridlock, I cross into Jersey, where I stop to pick up hamburgers and a copy of the Times. It’s June 21. I died about one in the morning, near as I can figure. Maybe I should hold a wake.
I search the front page, finding it in the lower-left corner. Shit. Where’d they get that picture of me?
I think back to holidays with the cheerful Jeremy clan all scattered warmly around a seared and puffed-up turkey. It was Jeremy’s sister and that damn camera of hers. She was always snapping away like she was poking you in the eye.
BRIDGE CLAIMS AUTHOR’S LIFE, the headline screams. Below it says, “Woman plummets, feared dead. No body recovered.” I consider this for a moment, wondering what it would be like if they did recover a body. I’m thinking about the impact on me.
Later in the article, they mention Jeremy and how he was found taped to a chair and beaten. The police are investigating. They won’t reveal the details. They have suspicions.
I think of the crumpled Detective Bates. He’s a worry.
So I jettison myself out of fast-food heaven and tool along on Highway 80, putting miles between me and all my “friends and family.” I head west through Jersey, listening to Joplin wail about her ball and chain.
She carries me into Pennsylvania, where I pick up a late dinner at Scranton. All the people I see have very white faces, a little puffy and stale.
No wonder people live in New York. The world out here is loaded with freaks. Maybe they’re all cousins, I think. Maybe they’re just sisters and brothers.
People used to say that about Violet and me. They’d ask if we were sisters. Maybe it’s some guy that just got done screwing both of us.
“Hey, are you two sisters?”
What’s the polite thing to say?
Some of Ben’s clients asked for “the sisters.” Maybe that gave them a special thrill.
Violet was lean, though, making her look tall. I was medium height, but solid and tight. We both had olive skin and deep-set eyes. Her hair was black and coarser, mine tending toward auburn after hours of sunning on the roof.
I buy a Scranton paper and take a room at a hotel. When I get to my room, which is, by the way, smelling of prison disinfectant (I remember from my days incarcerated for shoplifting), I open the paper. There I am again, my face staring out of the front page.
God. This is making me nervous. I read the article, which says the same as the one in the Times, ending of course with that distasteful reminder. The police are investigating.
Walking to the bathroom, I look in the mirror, taking the wig off and slapping it back on, trying to see if it really works. And I’m worried about the Taurus. Now that the inimitable Detective Bates is investigating, as I’m sure he is, I think of the car and license registered under the name Elizabeth Boone.
Next morning, after choking down a glass of fermented orange juice and the white toast offering in the lobby, I ask directions at the desk. First, I hit the Goodwill, where I pick up some men’s clothes that are too big for me. I find a Chicago Bulls baseball-style hat and a ripped pair of sneakers.
At some generic “mart” store, I buy a road atlas, a duffel bag, a couple blankets, an Ace bandage, a slick pair of sunglasses, and a zippered bag. At the beauty supply shop, I get a bleaching rinse, a pair of scissors, and a buzz clipper.
Returning to my room, I get busy.
I cut my hair in handfuls, dropping it in the wastebasket. Then I buzz it all over and bleach what’s left. I wrap the Ace bandage around my breasts to flatten them, and I try on my new oversize clothes, the baseball cap turned around backward, and the new sunglasses. I strut and posture like I have a wanger between my legs.
Kat and I used to do it for fun. I think of Kat now like I haven’t for years.
We’d dress like boys and tool around the Village, whistling at girls like we were stupid. One time we ventured into a men’s john. We stood on either side of this short guy squirting into the urinal. Kat and I took turns commenting on his style, his method, and aim. I had a dildo in a harness that I whipped out and started slapping from side to side. The guy ran out of there, stuffing in his poker as he went.
I check in the mirror. Yep. I can pull it off. My identity, however, is beginning to fade.
Switching back into my Rebecca Cross wig and clothes, I clean my stuff out of the car. I hook the body holster onto the back of my jeans, then check the clip and slide in the semiautomatic. I practice drawing it a few times. Over that goes a flannel shirt. My extra IDs and my writing go in the zippered bag. I pack the guns in the duffel bag, then throw it in the car, checking out of the hotel.
At the Ford dealership, they make a nice bid on the Taurus, but they’re sad that I don’t want to buy a car. I’m sad, too. I’m thinking about my Porsche left running on the bridge.
After signing the title, I take the check, slinging my duffel bag over my shoulder. About a half mile down the road, I cash the check at a bank. Then I eat more hamburgers, feeling a little sick to be doing this so-called food two days in a row. In the bathroom, I change into a guy.
Out on the road, I stick out my thumb, slouching, acting like my musculature has possession of me. A trucker picks me up. He’s heading south on eighty-one.
I toss in my bag and set off, chatting with Jack, the truck driver, about manly things as we barrel along the highway toward God knows where. It reminds me of hitchhiking to New York fifteen years ago.
I slept under bridges, ate out of Dumpsters, and shoplifted my way to the city. I got caught one time, but I’m a fast runner. I left the hefty security guy in my wake, his stomach bouncing like it was made of water.
Back then, I still carried the weight of Rivertown. I talked the talk of the river. I walked like I was made of iron, like I was Gedders, banging at life like a hammer.
Kat changed all that. I always wondered about her, where she came from, because she was so different from the rest of us that Ben picked up off the streets. Kat was like silk and the rest of us were wool.
I took to Kat like a puppy dog, always edging up next to her. She never pushed me away. She petted me, curled her arm around. When I first came out of the basement and couldn’t talk, she read Dickinson and Shelley to me, slow and singsong.
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.
And revery, and revery, she’d say like you were dreaming.
While I was in training, Ben taught me how to please a man. Kat taught me the pleasure of women. She would come into my bed at night and undress me, teaching me the lips, the tongue, the skin along the back, how to press a nipple, how to tug, how to tease it with the tongue. She taught me her clitoris, the proper way to stroke, how to enclose it with the lips, the use of fingers, and how to thrust.
Kat’s face was square, with high cheekbones and amber eyes. Her hair, the color of sand, fell the length of her back. She let me braid it for the plays so that it lay like rope showing off her spine, the elegant lines of her body, her rounded thighs. She looked good in the cuffs, her head high, her full breasts much to be desired.
She taught me lace bras and camisoles. She taught me corsets and hosiery. She dressed me in silk and jewelry, teaching me to walk, to sit, how to lie waiting, how to curve the back, to flush the lips.
Just as I practiced on Violet with the whi
p, Kat practiced on me. Not that I think Ben ever made her. She chose me herself for her own pleasure. I thought of it as a way to be near her.
Kat would pack me in the box sometimes for no reason. So that you’ll mind me, she said. It made me draw nearer, need her, look to her. I couldn’t bear for her to leave without me for even a few hours.
Kat started throwing up blood one day. When Ben came in, she turned halfway toward him, then collapsed on the floor. I started crying, trying to get Kat to wake up.
Ben left the bathroom and came back a few minutes later with a blanket. He wrapped her in it and carried her out the door. I never saw her again.
He kept me near him then. He knew how it hurt me. It was always bad whenever we lost one of the family.
Sitting in the big rig, wheeling south toward Harrisburg, I think I can smell her clothes and her skin. I remember Kat’s laughter, how it fell like rain.
The night I first hit New York, it was storming like crazy. A trucker with a load of caskets from Ohio, my made-up birthplace, picked me up in Jersey, riding me all the way into Manhattan. It was one in the morning. Seemed like a good time to be delivering caskets.
The next few days I found that vying for food in New York was a mean business. The last time I ate was out of a Dumpster at the truck stop where I hooked up with the casket courier.
That’s when Ben spotted me. I hadn’t washed for two weeks at least. I’d certainly never been bulky, and the trip to New York had taken a toll. I don’t know what he saw in me as he cruised the streets.
He parked his car and walked to where I was sitting, getting weaker, wondering if I should try to find a shelter.
“Hey, kid,” he said to me.
I pretended he wasn’t talking to me.
“Hey,” he said, his voice kind. “You look new.” He took my chin gently and turned my face to him. Ben coaxed me into going to a pizza joint with him. I knew he was going to want something for it, but at that point, I didn’t have many choices.
He bought me pizza and milk, I remember. And he gave me his card.
“Look,” he said. “My wife and I live just down the street. We try to help out runaways and either get you back home or set up with a job here. It’s better than living out on the streets.”
When I was done, I waited for him to tell me what he wanted in return. He had them put the rest of the pizza in a bag for me. I hid it in my clothes.
“If you get tired of being out like this,” he said. “Come over to our place.” He got in his car then and drove off. The whole thing was different than what I expected.
God, he was smart. I wonder if any of the kids he primes never show up at his “apartment.” I wonder if they know that they got away.
A cold wind set up that night, driving the rain down the streets. It kept up the next day. I tried a shelter, but it was full. As night came on again and looking to get even colder, a group of three boys, drunk on their asses, chased me near half a mile until I lost them.
That’s when I thought of Ben and walked to his place. I pushed the buzzer and waited. A woman’s voice answered.
“Ben gave me a card,” I said. “He said I could crash here for awhile.”
She buzzed me in.
I liked Kat as soon as I saw her.
“Need a drink? Some Coke?” She took a blanket off the couch and draped it over my shoulders. I felt warmth for the first time in days. She brought me a tall glass of Coke, which I sucked up fast. She smiled and took the glass from me, going back to the kitchen. I heard her make a phone call.
When she came back, she handed me a glass of orange juice. Then she showed me around the place, talking on and on about stuff I didn’t care about.
Kat led me to the back bedroom. It had several mattresses on the floor with blankets folded on each.
“This is where you sleep while you’re here,” she said, watching me close.
I looked the room over, feeling funny.
“Sit down,” she said and helped me to a mattress. I leaned against the wall. “You haven’t been eating enough. You’re light-headed from the Coke.”
The door to the apartment opened and shut. Ben came in. The room was getting fuzzy and spinning. My body felt heavy.
“She’s young,” Kat said.
Ben stooped and looked in my eyes. I started sliding sideways down the wall. He lay his large palm along my cheek.
“I think she might end up being good.”
“When she’s cleaned up, she’ll be beautiful.”
The last thing I remember is Ben asking, “How much did she drink?”
Kat was stroking my head, looking down at me. “All of it.”
When my buddy Jack and I hit Cumberland, I have him drop me off. I become Rebecca again. Then I find a Ford dealership, picking up another Taurus, this time the station wagon.
After that, I buy a newspaper. Clarisse is nowhere to be found.
I think about Jeremy in the hospital for another stay. I wonder if his synchronicity problem will recur. Maybe some woman who’s a lover of dogs will find him all bruised and battered. She’ll tell him to sit. Stay. Roll over.
I spread out my guns in the car like before and study the atlas. I want to lie low someplace and let this thing blow over. Let Detective Bates decide that I’m scooting the bottom of the East River.
I head for Monongahela National Forest. It looks so green on the map. Anything that color must be good. I’ve never camped a day in my life, but I figure it can’t be any harder than sleeping under bridges and eating out of Dumpsters.
On my way downstate, I stop and buy a case of Coke, lots of canned food, and a can opener. I also buy a spoon.
At the ABC I pick up two big bottles of Southern Comfort, thinking of Joplin. It’s the push behind that’s starting to rise again like it was only sleeping for a couple of days.
I find myself crying as I drive, not remembering when I started or why. And pictures are coming to me, quick slices of action stripped of color and backdrop. I think of Mama and Mandy, just bones in the ground. I think of Kat’s touch. And Violet. She’s in a pauper’s grave, a pine box. Another Jane Doe forgotten.
I cry myself into the mountains, finding that they are, indeed, a beautiful color of green. I pick a camping spot under pines that wave and sigh, opening my first bottle of whiskey and starting my long slide into forgetfulness.
I don’t remember much about the next week except for puking. That begins to wane as I stop eating and just drink the whole day.
I have the campground all to myself except for a sweet retired couple that show up midweek. They’re driving a piece of aluminum so big and long, they have to back up and go forward about ten times just to get it around a bend in the road. I’ve never seen such a thing, and I think maybe the whiskey has something to do with it.
In my drunken stupor, I amuse myself by changing back and forth throughout the day from Becker, my male identity, to Becca, as I refer to Rebecca now.
As Becker, I help Joe and Mildred set up a nifty screened tent thing around their picnic table. Later on, I visit as Becca.
“Your boyfriend is so nice,” they say. “The two of you should come over for dinner. Do you like to play cards?”
I decline, telling them, as I stumble over nothing and sag against a tree, that we just got married and all we can do is screw.
Their faces go white, but not as white as those people in Scranton.
After a week in this state, I notice while reading the campground rules for the hundredth time, since it’s the only thing to do, that each site may be occupied for seven days max. This information slowly worms its way into my alcohol-soaked brain.
So I move to the next campground, finding that it’s bigger and that more people are camped there. A wide, rocky stream flows enthusiastically along one side. That’s where everybody is camping. I choose a spot the farthest away.
Still dressed as Becca but without the wig, I settle in for the night. I unfold the short lawn chair I picked up a
t the camp store while en route to my new home. Then I plop my bottle down beside it.
As I happily scan the day’s newspaper, the type of which appears to be getting more blurry, I notice a suspicious headline:
TWO TEENS DIE IN COPYCAT SUICIDE.
I read on.
Two female teens jumped in tandem from the Brooklyn Bridge last night, copying the recent suicide of author Clarisse Broder.