by Jody Gehrman
“I NEED A DRINK!” she screams back. Her voice is shrill and hoarse but still louder than his, and she drowns him out.
There’s a thud, maybe a chair falling over, and now my heart starts beating so fast it feels like wings in my chest. I get up, but my legs are wobbly beneath me. More sounds from the bedroom—not words, just sounds of bodies moving and furniture shifting. I listen carefully as I navigate the dark living room. When I get to the bedroom door, I pause, trying to slow my heart by breathing more deeply. “You guys?”
“What?” Arlan says.
“Everything okay?” No answer. I hear a drawer being dragged open. Everything polite and respectful in me says, return to couch, but somehow I can’t make myself. I stand there with my ear almost touching the door and one hand on the knob. I hear that sound from Lucy again—that half animal, half human murmur. Without deciding to, I push the door open.
There’s one lamp on—I remember it from my first night inside Smoke Palace; it’s draped with a red scarf that casts the whole room in a fiery hue. Arlan is standing near the chest of drawers with his long hair draped over his shoulders like Jesus. As I enter, his eyes move to take me in, but the rest of him stays perfectly still. He looks more than ever like those old photos of Indian chiefs—high cheekbones, sepia skin, dark eyes burning.
“Fuck you,” Lucy moans from the tangle of sheets. She is half naked but her shoes are on. She stares up at the ceiling. One hand hangs limp over the side of the bed; her pale fingers are dyed red by the light in the room. Slowly, she turns her head toward me, and though most of her face is draped in shadow, her vacant eyes stir a terrible, haunted feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Fuck…” She draws in her breath as if preparing to say more, but then she just sighs, scratches her face and closes her eyes.
“What’s wrong with her?” I ask Arlan. He doesn’t answer. He turns toward the chest of drawers and slams the top one closed with such force it makes me jump. “Arlan? Talk to me.”
“‘Arlan, talk to me,’” Lucy mimics, her eyes still closed.
He runs one hand through his hair, grabs his jacket off the bed. Lucy curls into a fetal position. He looks at me. “I got to get out of—” he begins, but his voice falters. “Keep an eye on her.”
“I don’t need anybody’s fucking eye on—”
“Lucinda—” I say sharply. She curls her knees closer to her chin and moans.
“I gotta go.” He moves toward the door, but I’m in his way. I touch his arm and the warmth of his skin makes my mouth go dry. His eyes search my face.
Lucy mumbles, “God, this sucks,” from the bed, and then he disappears, slamming the door as he goes.
“Anna,” Lucy calls out. “Why is this happening?”
I go to her, and hesitate there at the side of the bed, looking down at her half-naked body, her dark mess of hair, before I lie down next to her. She’s still curled up, her eyes closed. “Never mind,” I say. “Go to sleep, now. It’ll be okay.”
“God,” she moans. “Why do I do it?”
“I don’t know. But whatever it is, it’s done.”
When she falls asleep, I move silently to the foot of the bed; taking infinite care not to wake her, I unlace and remove her shoes. Her feet are incredibly small and delicate. I tuck them under the quilt. Standing above her, watching her eyelids tremble with sleep, I find myself hating her. I wish Arlan had never met her—I wish she was never born. So her mother lives in a trailer, her stepdad has a hollow-eyed, lumpy face and her sister yanks her around by her hair. So what? Does it mean she can do whatever she wants—hurt whoever she feels like hurting—even Arlan, who worships her?
I sit back down on the bed and try to redirect my thoughts. I remember how she seemed that first night downtown: impulsive, colorful, like a bright red kite swooping and diving in the wind. She was someone I’d never imagined I could know; her confidence was palpably magnetic. I thought if I could absorb even a little of her magic, something in me would come alive, and someone like Arlan—who am I kidding? Arlan himself—would want me the way he wants Lucy. But sitting next to her, listening to the sound of her breathing thicken as Arlan drives through the night, I can’t get it back—the affection and awe I felt just a few months ago.
For the first time all summer, I seriously consider leaving Bellingham. I threatened to go once, but she and I both knew I was only bluffing. I sit staring at the low, yellow moon glimmering through the branches of the elm outside, and a trace of life beyond the Land of Skin floats within my peripheral vision. I lie down and gaze at the ceiling, preparing for the hours of insomnia that stretch out before me, wondering why loving Lucinda ever seemed like a good idea.
The days that follow are torturous. We haven’t heard or seen from Arlan for over a week. Lucy is alternately sullen, furious and remorseful, with mood cycles that spin quickly, often within minutes. Grady is so anxious, he’s taken to wandering around town until three or four in the morning, searching for Arlan in every bar, motel, pancake house and all-night diner, returning more defeated and overwrought each time.
At twilight, I sit out on the porch, watching the bats hunting as the sky peaks in an unbearable brightness of blue. A huge, crushing loneliness seizes me, making it difficult to move. It’s worse in the middle of the night, when I can’t sleep and I can’t fend off visions. I see Arlan in some sleazy motel room, surrounded by empty bottles of booze. The image is painfully detailed, etched into my brain with photographic clarity: the bad watercolor landscape of some distant desert hanging above the bed; his long, beautiful body, dressed in blue jeans and no shirt, lying facedown on top of a cheap, earth-toned bedspread.
No wonder I’ve never loved anyone except my father. His death left my heart deformed. Now, at the slightest disturbance, it becomes inflamed—tender and soft. Wanting Arlan makes it swell until it’s hideous.
My mother calls again. She’s completely transformed. She speaks in a light, airy tone, and I can see her clutching her cell phone in the lobby of some opulent hotel with soft Persian carpets on the floor and brass buttons springing from the employees’ uniforms.
“Hi, Anna,” she says brusquely. “I just wanted you to know, the conference is almost over. I was wondering if you’d like to get together?”
“What conference?”
“I’ve been in Seattle for a tech conference. You knew that, didn’t you?” There’s static on the line, and a sound of laughter in the background.
“No. I mean, I knew you were up here, but—”
“You don’t think I came all this way just to check up on you?” She lets out a strained, brittle laugh, and suddenly I feel so sorry for her I can hardly stand it.
“No,” I say. “Of course not.”
“Well, I’d still like to get together,” she says, her voice climbing higher on the last word.
“Yeah, okay. I can come down there, if you like.” I close my eyes, hoping she’ll settle for this. There’s a slight pause.
“Okay, fine.” We arrange a date, and she gives me the address of her hotel in downtown Seattle. I jot it down and try not to picture her, but I can’t help myself. I see her frosted hair, perfectly coiffed and motionless, her restless hands picking at imaginary lint on her smooth, pressed slacks. “You think you can find that?” she asks doubtfully.
“Sure. I can read a map.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I’ll be there,” I say. “Don’t worry.”
I walk into Lucy’s bedroom as the sky is fading to black. “Okay,” I say. “Just tell me what happened.”
“Oh God,” she says. “Drama, drama.”
“Come on. I’m tired of not asking, and you’re obviously not going to volunteer the information.”
“He found me at Danny’s,” she says, and I’m shocked at how easily she confesses.
“And…?”
“And yes, we were fucking. So what? You know I don’t believe in monogamy.” She pulls her knees close to her, rests her chin bet
ween them.
“Danny Dog? I thought you hated—”
“I do.”
“So why were you—?”
“He’s got good drugs.” She sighs. “Don’t look at me like that, okay? I refuse to feel guilty.”
“Aren’t you scared?”
“Of what?”
“Losing him!”
She puts a strand of her hair into her mouth and chews on it thoughtfully. “Yeah,” she says. “I guess so.”
“You guess so?”
“Look, me and Arlan have been together a long time, okay? You’ve been here a few months—you don’t know shit about how we operate, so don’t barge into my room and lecture me on—”
“I’m not lecturing you.”
“You could have fooled me.” She leans over and grabs a pack of cigarettes from the nightstand. As she lights one, she flops over onto her stomach and leans out the window, blowing the smoke into the cold night air. “He’ll be back. He always comes back.”
“You’re so smug, Lucy. God. Sometimes people leave and they don’t come back.” My voice is shaking all of a sudden, and I look away.
“He’s okay,” Lucy says. “He’s not hurt or anything. I would know if he was.”
“Of course he’s hurt, that’s why he—”
“Don’t be deliberately dense,” she says, enunciating carefully. “I mean he’s not dead in a ditch or anything.” She lowers her voice, like she’s telling me a secret. “You’re getting him all mixed up with your dad. Arlan would never do that. He just needs time to cool off.”
I look at her. Sometimes she’s frighteningly perceptive. I wait a moment before I ask what I need to know. “You do love him, right?”
She turns to me. “If I knew how, I would.”
I want to slap her. “I wish you two had never met,” I say.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“He deserves someone who loves him.”
She lets out a puff of smoke with a throaty, sarcastic sound. “Someone like you, huh?”
I feel myself starting to blush, but then a surge of adrenaline kicks in and I’m too mad to be ashamed. “Why not me?” She’s silent a second, and for the first time since I met her, she looks authentically taken aback. “At least I care about people. At least I wouldn’t put him through hell, just to show I could. Do you have any idea what he goes through with you?”
“Please! Spare me the ‘poor Arlan’ shit. What do you think keeps him with me? He’s sexier—that’s obvious. He stays with me because bitches are addictive, plain and simple. You ‘care about him’—that’s why he’s never looked at you twice.”
I know she’s trying hard to hurt me, and for some reason that makes it easier not to wince. “It’s so sad,” I say. “You think you’ve got to have smoke and mirrors just to keep people interested. You’re smart and funny and totally original, Lucy. You don’t need all this other shit.” I pull on a sweater and head for the door.
“Where are you going?” she calls, and her voice sounds like a little girl’s. I know she hates to be alone, but tonight that’s not my problem.
“Out,” I say, and slam the door behind me.
As I walk, the wind picks up, and I’m sure I can smell the icy mountaintops of Canada. My hair tosses wildly. I think about everything Lucy said: about me mixing up Arlan and my dad. About bitches being addictive, and Arlan never even looking at me twice. More than once, I’ve fancied myself a threat to their perverse stranglehold of love; it’s disloyal and selfish, I know, but I wanted Arlan to be seduced by my silent adoration and give up on Lucy’s hot–cold roulette. But she’s right. Arlan gets adoration every time he climbs on stage—hell, when he walks down the street he’s practically smothered by it. Lucy’s got him tangled up in a never-ending net of questions, surprises and betrayals. He’ll never be bored with her, even if the excitement kills him.
One big difference between Lucy and me: she doesn’t know what it’s like to lose. She fends off loneliness with a constant supply of willing substitutes, but real loss—the kind where you can never get the person back—is completely foreign to her. That’s what allows her to be reckless with other people’s hearts. She doesn’t know what it’s like to have regrets.
That’s part of what makes her irresistible—her magical immunity to what-if. I’ve got regrets that cling to me everywhere I go. At the center of my doubts is my father, the black hole of what-ifs. For fourteen years, the possibilities have festered in me like cancer. What if my father just wanted to get away from us? My mother and I were a unit when I was young—her resentful eyes and my incessant, childish needs must have blended together seamlessly. I think of that day, sitting on the couch with him, crying, while his eyes probed the window of our living room. I wanted him to hold me, but couldn’t I have shut up about that? If only I hadn’t cried so much. And why couldn’t my mother have concentrated on loving him instead of Bender? Why couldn’t she have dedicated herself to him alone? We might have kept him, then.
Or maybe we could have let him go; so many fathers leave, anyway. He could have gotten into his old Volvo and driven far away—to Mexico, maybe, or north to Canada. He would be alive now, swimming through turquoise waters, watching the whales lumber slowly through the ocean depths, or trudging through the Canadian snow to a tiny cabin with a curl of delicate smoke twisting out of the chimney, reaching skyward. It would have been hard to let him go, but at least then he’d be somewhere. I could be searching for him now, instead of reading his cryptic letters and quizzing Bender for clues about who he was.
When I reach the docks, Bender is nowhere in sight. I stand at the gate and call out his name. When nothing happens, I imagine him with startling, grim clarity in a pool of vomit, motionless in the bowels of his boat. I remember the gray of Danny’s face the day we drove him to the hospital. Fear clutches at my intestines and I call his name again and again, shouting so loudly into the wind that my throat starts to hurt.
“Whoa whoa whoa!” I hear a gruff voice behind me. I spin around and Bender materializes from the darkness, carrying a six-pack of beer by the plastic rings. “Where’s the fire, Medina?”
“Oh God. I thought—I don’t know. Something happened to you.”
“Just ran to the corner for a little Bud. I’ve stopped buying by the case. I miscalculated a little.” He opens the gate, and we walk together to the boat. “What seems to be the problem?” He tears off a beer and hands me one, takes one for himself.
“Did you ever feel like you were losing it?”
“Daily.” He cracks open his beer, takes a sip. I just stand there holding mine.
“I’m a basketcase tonight.”
“Love or money?” he asks.
“What?”
“All sorrows spring from one or the other.”
“Love, I guess.” I feel really stupid saying it, though. Who am I kidding? What do I know about love?
“Aha. The worse kind.”
“Bender, I’m totally hopeless. I can’t bond with people. I’ve been sleeping half my life, and now that I’ve woken up, I’m still twelve years old. Here,” I say, shoving the beer at him. “I didn’t want to tell you before, but I hate Budweiser.”
“No problem,” he says. “One more for me.”
“I always think everyone’s going to shoot themselves in a hotel room—it’s a phobia with me. I’m not normal. You know sometimes I could swear he killed himself to get away from us—”
“Hold on, now. Slow down. You think your dad—?”
“Yeah.”
“Who’s this ‘us’?”
“Me and Mom.”
“Anna…”
“I know, okay, so it sounds ridiculous, but think about it. His letters are all about his life not panning out. He wanted to be jamming with Dylan instead of taking us to the movies. Maybe if he’d just left us, you know, he could’ve been happy.”
Bender shakes his head, comes and stands so close to me that I can smell the yeasty scent of his beer. �
��Listen to me, Medina. Your father loved you. More than anything, okay?”
“Well, of course—that’s the party line—I mean what else are you going to say? ‘You’re right. He offed himself because of you’?”
“Hey! I don’t bullshit—you know that.” He furrows his brow in concentration. “I knew your dad a long time, and he was always restless. He was a little unstable. That was just his way.”
“Crazy, you mean?”
“I wouldn’t call it that. Some people might. I’m telling you he didn’t do it because of you. All right? You were the best thing in his life.” His blue eyes pin me motionless, and the wrinkles around his mouth deepen as he frowns. “If you didn’t get that from his letters, then read them again.” He turns away from me and heads for the cabin.
“Where are you going?”
“Hold on,” he says. “I want to show you something.”
When he reemerges, he’s got an envelope in his hand. “What’s that?” I ask.
“I didn’t know if I should give you this or not. I thought it might make you too sad.”
“What is it?” I can feel a strange little lump forming itself in my throat.
“I figured I’d give you the others first, see how that went.”
“Is it a—” I have to will my lips to conform to the words “—suicide note?” I’ve spent the better part of my adolescence writing other peoples’ last words. It was one of my favorite parts of the Suicide Maps—making up the excuses they would leave behind. But my father left nothing but silence.
“I don’t know. It’s just the last one, is all.” He stands there holding it, and even in the dim light of the docks, I can see that his hand is shaking. He hands it to me. I hand it back.
“You read it,” I whisper.
“You sure?” I nod.
“‘Dear Einstein.’” He clears his throat. I reach into my pocket and take hold of Shiva, trying to slow the racing of my heart. Bender looks at me. “You sure you want me to read this?”
“No,” I say. “I mean, yes.”
He nods. “‘Dear Einstein,’” he reads. “‘Once again, I’m sending you my fragmentary thoughts for storage, such as they are. You remember when we tripped in Golden Gate Park? Remember how the grass smelled as sad and alive as the music of Robert Johnson? Those were the Times. We were the People. Please remember.