Inside

by Alix Ohlin

  One day she came home to find Alan by himself, lifting weights in the corner. “Where’s Hilary?” she said.

  He grunted and ignored her, his thin face straining with effort.

  She couldn’t think of another time when the two of them had ever been alone together. Hilary was always there, her body a buffer between them. Alan reached down and picked up a heavier barbell. They were his prized possessions, these weights, and they gleamed in the light. He faced the window, curling his biceps and panting with every lift. She stepped closer to him—he smelled sweaty and gross—and tried to catch his eye, but he wouldn’t look away from his muscles.

  “Listen,” she said. “You know you guys can’t stay here forever. I hope you’re saving some money. Once the baby comes, you’re going to have to support them. You’re going to have to grow up.”

  But once she’d delivered these lines she felt ridiculous. What did she know about supporting a family? She had been in Hilary’s position once, and had made the opposite choice. She’d left her parents behind too, getting as far away as she could from any kind of family. Thinking back on it, she could barely remember what thoughts had guided her decisions, or if she had had any thoughts at all. That time in her life was a blur of hate: her father was awful, her mother pathetic, both of them so self-absorbed they barely noticed anything she did. Anything she had made of herself, she’d accomplished without them. The one person who’d been kind to her back then was her therapist, and that was only because it was Grace’s job. Thinking about this made her angry all over again, and the anger flowed onto Alan, whose only reaction to her statement had been to shift the barbell from one hand to the other. She could see his lips moving as he counted repetitions.

  “Have you even thought about where you’re going to live?”

  With a groan, he set the weight down. He was wearing a dirty tank top and his white skin shimmered with sweat. When he straightened up, his face was flushed with blood. “Why don’t you shut up?” he said.

  Anne felt a physical ripple across her face, as if he’d slapped her. “Excuse me?”

  “You act like you know everything. But you don’t. Just mind your own business.”

  “Hard to do when you’re living in my apartment.”

  “So you think you can boss us around? Act like you’re better than us?”

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re just some stuck-up bitch,” he said, turning away.

  Flashing with anger, sparks in her veins, she grabbed his arm and yanked it. She could tell he was surprised by how strong she was. “You shut the fuck up,” she said. “You’re nothing. Nothing. You owe me.”

  Her fingernails scraped his clammy skin as he pulled his arm away, and she liked what she saw in his eyes. He was scared.

  May came to the city, the bloom of trees a wistful pink against a pale sky. In the parks the memorials were fading, the pictures of the missing now gray and tearing around the edges. Old dried flowers bobbed their stiff heads in the wind; jars that had once held candles lay empty on their sides. The streets seemed ribboned with litter. And yet the weather was pretty, and people gathered at tables outside restaurants, glad to feel the sun on their faces again.

  Anne’s play opened, and she was good in it; she knew she was. The audiences were tiny, mostly hipsters and college-theater nerds who went to see everything, but it was enough. There were reviews in two weeklies, and one called her performance “compelling.” She cut the reviews out and pasted them in a scrapbook next to the playbill, something she hadn’t done since high school.

  She gave Hilary and Alan tickets for a Friday-night show, and when they didn’t turn up she was angrier than she would’ve expected. She had sacrificed her apartment to these runaways, and they couldn’t even get it together to sit through two hours of theater? And the worst part was that she couldn’t get mad at them, because the whole deal, the basis of the relationship, was that they needed her, not the other way around. To tell them she was disappointed would have been to lose whatever thin emotional edge she still possessed. She assumed Alan had told Hilary about their confrontation, and that was why they hadn’t come.

  When she got home that night, though, they weren’t there. This was more than unusual—they spent every night in front of the TV. Maybe they’d gotten lost on the subway? They were just two teenagers from the country. But they had left their families, without a word of explanation, and probably their parents had stood silent and gape-mouthed in their homes, just like she was now, wondering where they were.

  At three in the morning, sleepless, she heard the door open. She went to the living room and saw Alan leading Hilary to the couch.

  “What happened? Is everything okay?”

  “She had a fever and kept throwing up.” Alan’s voice was gentle. “We went to the emergency room. We were worried it was going to hurt the baby.”

  “And what did they say?” Anne turned on the fluorescent light in the kitchen, and in its blue glow Hilary looked wan, her face an uneasy gray.

  “It was food poisoning, they told us. We think from Panda Kitchen.”

  “What are we supposed to do? Does she need some water? I could get some ginger ale.”

  Alan shook his head. “They put her on an IV for a while, so right now it’s okay. She probably just wants to sleep.”

  In other words, she understood, go back to bed and leave us alone. “What about the baby? Is the baby going to be all right?”

  “Doc said no problem,” Alan said. “Young healthy mom, should be a young healthy baby.”

  “Okay.” At the bedroom door she turned around and said, “I’m sorry.” She waited for him to say it was all right, but he didn’t.

  In the morning Hilary’s face still looked bad, as waxy as fake fruit. She kept pawing at the blanket around her and shifting her massive weight around the tiny couch.

  “I’m cold,” she said. “I’m hot. I don’t feel good. My skin hurts. I have a fever.” She threw these statements into the air, expecting someone to catch them. Alan wanted to stay home from work, but Anne told him he should go; she’d be home all day and could take care of her.

  “I’m sweaty,” Hilary said. “My clothes stink. I’m dizzy.”

  Feeling at once guilty and pitying, Anne said, “Maybe you should sleep in my bed instead. It’s probably more comfortable.”

  Which is how she came to give up her bedroom and live on the couch herself.

  It made more sense, really. Hilary spent her days beached on the bed, reminding Anne of her mother, who in the difficult time before Anne left home had passed most weekends this way. Her mother stole into her mind more and more often these days—her voice, her smell, her small, pleading smile, the childhood games they’d played. Anne would never have admitted she missed her; these thoughts were probably just from being around Hilary, wondering what kind of mother she was going to be.

  Once Hilary was settled on the bed she treated it as her unassailable kingdom, her lily pad, her island. Every time Anne came back to the apartment, even before closing the door, she would hear Hilary calling her name from the bedroom. Then she would glance through the doorway and see her propped up on cushions, a National Enquirer open beside her, its pages crumpled from where she’d napped on them, a plate of half-eaten food on the nightstand, the bed dotted with candy wrappers and tissues.

  “Anne? Could you bring me some ice cream?”

  For her entertainment the television had been moved into the bedroom. Alan had moved in there too, but he still slept on a pallet on the floor beside her. Day by day Hilary was becoming more childlike, unable to do anything for herself, but she was also growing more demanding and physically imposing, a capricious giant whose whims must be appeased.

  Anne would deliver a bowl of her favorite flavor, chocolate, with sprinkles on top. If someone had told her a year earlier that she’d be serving ice cream to a strange girl in her apartment, she wouldn’t even have laughed. But now this st
ranger took it without thanking her and pointed at the screen, where a sitcom family was hashing out their differences over the kitchen table, the laughs ceding to a heart-to-heart talk, the teenage kids expressing contrition and shame.

  “God, I’m glad I don’t live there,” Hilary said.

  Anne nodded. “Me too.”

  Success came when she was least interested in it, much less desperate for it. This gave her a nonchalant confidence, an ability to take risks, that made her a better actress. The director loved her performances so much he wanted to die every single night. He also floated the idea of sleeping with her, which Anne previously would have considered the cost of doing business. But now she turned him down and he didn’t seem to hold it against her, just renewed his efforts every once in a while, as did others in the cast and crew, confirming that she’d become a valuable commodity.

  Her phone rang with offers to audition, to join workshops, to pose for photographs. Apparently what she’d heard about one break was true, how momentum starts and picks up speed. Three agents contacted her; two took her out for expensive lunches. She had new head shots made. The run on the current play was extended. Anne basked in all of it, and each night she stretched herself out, emotionally naked, unafraid, in front of the audience. Once it came to her, the attention she’d been fighting for during these months of struggle (now that they were past, she could admit that’s what they’d been) felt destined, nothing less than her due.

  The guy she’d been seeing, Magnus, only got sweeter in the face of this success. He took her out to dinner to celebrate; he brought flowers to every Saturday-night performance; he made all his friends come see the play and then stay for drinks with Anne afterward. On off nights, he had her over to his place and cooked dinner. The only problem was that he asked questions she wasn’t inclined to answer. In New York people seemed to take intense pleasure in laying out their romantic and family histories to one another. You were supposed to be open about everything—even your neuroses; especially your neuroses—and chart a map of your interior life.

  Anne couldn’t do it. She didn’t like to talk about her family and said only that she had left home at a young age and wasn’t in touch with them. She might have been able to get away with this, because Magnus was falling in love with her and she could tell he was constructing his own version of her life story in his mind. Her reticence must have been rooted in a tragic past, and the details of her survival would be coaxed out of her only by the right person at the right time. He was willing to wait and prove to her that he was that person, the long-awaited prince who could wake her with a kiss.

  The other problem, though, was her apartment. He had walked her to the building several times, but she never let him come up. Anne could see why this bothered him, but she couldn’t let him know about Hilary and Alan. That was just too hard to explain. She wasn’t even sure she could explain it to herself. So she’d say, “Maybe later. I’m tired tonight. Soon.”

  At first they joked about it. Magnus asked if she was extremely messy, or had a pet tiger, or—and she could hear the edge in his voice—if she was married, and she always laughed and denied everything.

  What he said was, “I don’t want to make this a condition. I’m not into demands or anything, but I just think it’s a little weird. If this is how you want it, Anne, okay, but …” The final word was always but. It was probably the last word he ever said to her. Things between them didn’t so much end as slip away. He stopped coming to every show, then stopped coming at all, and she let him go with more regret than she’d anticipated. He would have been the perfect man for some other, better version of herself.

  It was Anne who found a doctor for Hilary, because as far as she could tell the girl had made no effort to do so. She was so strong-willed most of the time that Anne tended to forget that she didn’t have much common sense. She treated pregnancy like a bad cold, something that called for a lot of bed rest and fluids. When Anne started asking about ultrasounds and tests, Hilary shook her head.

  “I don’t have insurance,” she said.

  “There are places you can go,” Anne pointed out.

  “Not that I’d want to go to.”

  “I don’t think you have a choice.”

  Lying propped on pillows, Hilary gestured vaguely at her belly. “Women have been doing this, like, forever,” she said. “I’m young. I’m built for this.”

  “Women have been dying in childbirth forever too,” Anne said.

  From the other room, Alan called, “Hey! Don’t be scaring her and shit! She’s scared enough already.”

  “Are you?” Anne said.

  The girl gazed back at her, blank-eyed, and shrugged. This was her apparent defense: to go blank. Whatever fear or anger was lurking inside that house, nobody would get to see.

  But some things you can’t let slide. So Anne spent an afternoon calling around until she found a clinic on the Lower East Side that could offer them an appointment the next day, then told Hilary that she’d take her.

  “Hey, what about me?” Alan said.

  “Don’t you have to work?” Anne said, sounding more unfriendly than she’d meant to.

  “I’ll take a day off.”

  “What about the money?”

  “It’s just money,” Alan said, looking at her like she was the one with messed-up priorities. “This is about the baby.”

  “If you’re so into the baby, how come you didn’t make her go to the doctor?”

  In response to this the boy flushed darkly. He was a weird kid, by turns watchful and wary, and often he seemed more like Hilary’s servant than her boyfriend. He’d flare with anger and dip into sulks, and there were days when he didn’t speak at all. Yet Anne saw clearly how her question pained him, how bad he felt, how confused and unprepared. How determined to do what was right. How helpless to do it.

  He did take the day off, but Anne insisted on going too, feeling they needed adult supervision. So the three of them got on the subway together, Alan finding Hilary a seat and standing in front of her like a bodyguard. In the waiting room, Anne gathered up every available pamphlet and stuffed them in her purse. The clinic was run by a women’s health organization and staffed by earnest young college graduates wearing handwoven sweaters and political buttons. On the walls were peeling posters that seemed to have been there since the seventies. Yo amo la leche, said a happy, smiling baby. Most of the patients sat with their hands folded in their laps, staring down at their bodies as if expecting them to explain how they’d gotten into this mess.

  When the nurse called Hilary’s name Anne and Alan jumped to attention, but she barely looked up, just nodded sleepily and slowly got to her feet.

  They were shepherded into the tiny examination room, which was painted a dingy color between tea and coffee and didn’t seem especially clean. Anne felt a pang of panic. What if something terrible happened? What would she do? The answer came to her instantly, from her darkest, truest recesses: Run.

  Alan stood next to Hilary, who was lying on the table, and held her hand. Anne knew he wouldn’t run. He might not know what to do, but he wouldn’t run. She pushed aside some dog-eared copies of Good Housekeeping and Redbook, magazines no teenage mother would want to read, and sat down in a chair.

  The doctor came in and said cheerfully, “Little crowded in here!” She looked about Anne’s age, a crunchy type with a pencil in her hair, wearing clogs.

  “Can we all stay?” Anne said.

  “Why don’t we ask the pregnant lady?” the doctor said. Hilary nodded her assent. “Okay, then! Let’s get started.”

  It was the kind of place where they didn’t scold you for not having come in sooner; they were more about making sure you came back. So Hilary was lavished with praise for being so healthy, for making the appointment, practically for brushing her teeth and eating ice cream. She didn’t say much in response, just submitted to the examination with her legs open and her eyes focused on a spot on the wall. The doctor peeled off her latex glov
es with an audible snap and said, “Looks great!” and then set up the ultrasound. And there it was, a black-and-white shadow puppet swimming in its dark pool. “Organs look good. Fingers and toes all there,” the doctor reported. “Do you want to know the sex of the baby?”

  “Yes,” Hilary said.

  “It’s a little girl.”

  Anne, who was still gazing at the screen, heard a strange sound and saw that Hilary was crying. “I wanted a girl,” she said.

  That night, there was an appreciative crowd at the small theater in Long Island City, holding its breath, taut with attention. Anne’s dialogue and gestures had by now become a part of her, as deep in her body as her muscles and bones. She had moved beyond conscious thought, beyond having to remember lines, toward a state of pure energy and flow. She was Mariska, and there was no boundary between where she left off and her character began. It didn’t feel like acting, more like being. It was the happiest she’d ever felt, those two hours in front of the audience, but after it was over she was deflated. It was like having a dream about flying that seems so true and possible, then waking up to understand it wasn’t real and never would be.

  The subway trip home was long, but she didn’t want to waste money on cabs or car services. She had started saving money for the baby, wanting to give her something she could rely on later, when and if other people let her down. Back at the apartment, she undressed in the dark with a minimum of noise or fuss and crawled between blankets on the couch. The place smelled of leftover pizza. She sighed. Sometime soon this phase would be over, and she would understand what it was all about, how Hilary and Alan fit into the story of her life.