Pretend She's Here

by Luanne Rice

  My fingers really were bleeding. My fingernails were bent backward, and I had left shreds of them in the lines of cement between the blocks. It was slightly softer there, and I’d thought if I could dislodge even one section, I could scrunch my shoulders and suck in my gut and crawl through. But I hadn’t managed to create even a crack. Instead, I’d just mangled my fingers, which hurt all the time, more than I thought was possible.

  When the steeple clock chimed five, I was on my hands and knees, once again pulling out the books on the bottom shelves to see if Mame’s photos were hiding there. That’s when it hit me: This was just a re-creation of Lizzie’s bedroom, not the real thing, and of course the Porters would have found the box, discovered the cell phone, taken it out of my reach.

  Mame’s phone was gone. The hope was gone.

  This wasn’t a play: It was my life.

  Once I gave up hope, I stopped caring what day it was. The hours and days just blurred together anyway, and all that mattered was that I was still here. No one had come to rescue me.

  Breakfast, lunch, dinner: day five. Breakfast, lunch, dinner: day six, day seven, day eight. Breakfast, lunch, dinner: Who cared? The meals ticked by.

  Mrs. Porter was the only person I saw. I had no idea where Chloe and Mr. Porter might be. It seemed that she and I were the only ones in the house. She sat with me while I ate. I was too hungry to refuse. I figured that even if she sedated me again it wouldn’t matter. I was still in that room. But there were no more drugs. And even though I thanked her for the food, said thank you, Mom, she didn’t let me roam free through the house or go outside.

  I guess she wasn’t yet convinced that I understood the situation.

  But I did.

  I still couldn’t reconcile this Mrs. Porter with the one I used to know, but I’d started to realize she had changed. She had lost Lizzie, and her mad grief had turned her into a monster. Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde.

  I kept wondering: What if she doesn’t wait for me to bolt? What if she hurts my family anyway? If there was no one to go home to, wouldn’t that stop me from wanting to return to Connecticut? It would destroy me so much I might forget who I was. I might want to wipe out my own memory.

  But all I wanted to do was remember. I thought about my family all the time. Their names were my prayers. We were Catholic. We only went to church about one Sunday a month. When we did, we sat in the same pew each time, four rows back from the altar on the left. Now that the older kids were away at college, they only came on Christmas and Easter.

  “Do you think they go to Mass on campus?” my dad asked my mom once.

  “That’s up to them. They do their own thing,” my mom said.

  We weren’t exactly strict when it came to religion. I never told anyone that I wished I could have a vision, like the kids at Fatima, seeing the Virgin Mary and having her speak to them directly. Everyone would have laughed at me.

  But our names? Catholic to the max. My mom had gone to St. Joseph’s College; my dad had gone to Holy Cross. They’d been taught by Sisters of Mercy and Jesuits, and once, when I asked why all us kids had saints’ names, my father had said, “Because life throws so much at us. We want you to remember to be kind, patient, and tolerant. To have empathy for other people, care about them. And to have that extra help, your own saint backing you.”

  “But we don’t always go to church,” I’d pointed out.

  “Caring about people doesn’t just take place there. It’s how you act out in the world, when no one is looking, where it really counts.”

  “I think I get it, Dad.”

  Our family volunteered at a soup kitchen in New London once a month. Tommy wanted to become a journalist and cover stories about immigration and refugees, families who had to leave their own countries because of war, violence, and poverty. Anne knit scarves and hats for people at the homeless shelter near her college in Hartford.

  Twice, before I was born, my parents had taken in foster children. I never knew the kids, both girls, but my older siblings had told me about them. Arlene had a mother addicted to heroin; Janice had been removed from her home because of abuse.

  I tried to imagine what it had been like for those girls. Were they afraid? Did they cry and want to return to their real homes, or did they feel safe, relieved to be in our house? They stayed only a short time, until a more permanent placement could be found. My parents eventually stopped having foster kids. No one said why, but I thought I knew. My mom’s drinking. When it got worse, it was harder for her to take care of her own kids, never mind someone else’s. Had Arlene realized my mother’s addiction was as powerful as her own mother’s?

  I didn’t exactly know how I could help others, but I thought someday, when I was older, I might become a therapist kids could talk to about having addictions in their family. That was something I understood.

  So, even though we skipped Mass a lot, we did our best. We believed in the sacraments and had all made our first communions and confirmations.

  That was one major plus, being a Catholic kid—when you made your confirmation, basically bonding your faith to the Holy Spirit in front of the bishop, the priest, your family, and the whole congregation—you got to choose an extra name. It had to belong to a saint, but it didn’t have to be one of the regular old ones like Joseph or Mary. You were allowed to get creative, and believe me, we did. My siblings and I vied for best, most unusual confirmation names, choosing saints who’d done awesome things.

  I ran my family’s names through my mind, just as I had in the highway woods, when I was waiting for my chance to escape the Porters. I said each full name—nickname, first, middle, confirmation, and last—over and over. Doing it was sort of like a prayer. I was invoking what I loved and believed in most: my family.

  My father, Thomas Francis Lonergan, had chosen Aquinas for his confirmation name. Thomas Aquinas had been a philosopher, and that was perfect because my father was so smart, a scholar, and down-to-earth as well.

  My mom was Mary Elizabeth, and she’d chosen Rose after St. Rose of Lima, a mystic who cared for the poor.

  Tommy, my oldest brother, was named for my dad, whom he adored, so when the time came, he chose Aquinas, too. Tommy was half saint, half devil, always so good to us, but known to do things like get the entire track team to climb onto the catwalk beneath the Langdon Bridge and cross a hundred feet above the Connecticut River at night.

  Mick’s confirmation name was Aloysius, after Aloysius Gonzaga, an amazing nobleman who gave up his riches and became a Jesuit to work with people dying of the plague in Rome. He was lead singer in the Rabid Squirrels, a band at college—we teased him that he was taking his nickname too seriously, trying to be the next Mick Jagger.

  My oldest sister, Anne, chose Agatha Anastasia; St. Agatha was a martyr and St. Anastasia was a healer and exorcist. Anne didn’t have a nickname—she was just Anne. If you knew her, you’d get it. Anne was perfect. Even her choice of saints—she would die for us, heal us, and, if she could, drive the demon of drinking from our mother.

  Iggy was, well, Iggy—just the sweetest, funniest, best brother. Always falling in love, getting his heart broken, then being comforted by the next girl with whom he’d fall in love and, in time, would break his heart. His confirmation name was Loyola, after the saint Ignatius Loyola, who patterned his life after the story of Camelot and later founded the Jesuits. Totally Iggy.

  Patrick Benedict Leo Lonergan—Patrick. He refused to answer to “Pat” because Tommy and Mick always turned it into “Patty.” We called him Pat anyway. I’m closer to him than my other brothers, probably because he’s just a year and a half older than I am. We have a pact that, when we’re old enough, we’re going to Ireland together to climb Croagh Patrick—St. Patrick’s mountain.

  Beatrice Felicity Michael Lonergan—Bea. I love that she chose a boy’s name, “Michael,” for her confirmation, because she totally adores—practically worships—our brother Mick, but also because St. Michael is an archangel—not a saint at all
, but an actual angel. That is my Bea. She’s less than a year older than I am—and Patrick ten months older than her. That makes us Irish triplets. Look it up, it’s a real thing.

  Then me. Emily Magdalene Bartholomea Lonergan. I took Bartholomea because she was a teacher, and I want to be one, too. My family calls me Emily, Em, Emms, Emelina, but mostly just Emily. I was named for this awesome saint, St. Emily de Vialar, founder of a French order of nuns, Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition. I mean, apparition! I’d sometimes talk to Mame about her—because even though Mame wasn’t Catholic, she knew a lot about France.

  “Your namesake’s convent is in the charming town of Gaillac, near Toulouse,” Mame said to me once. “It’s in an absolutely marvelous wine region, with this incredibly romantic hotel built straight into a cliff, like a luxurious limestone cave. When I was there, I ate snails and wild boar and drank Gamay and walked through misty vineyards under a full moon.”

  “What kind of apparition did St. Emily see?” Lizzie asked.

  “Probably the Virgin Mary,” I said. “That’s the usual.”

  “Huh,” Lizzie said. She was amazed and impressed. Congregationalists didn’t much go in for miracles and mysticism. It was a testament to our bond and best-friendship that Lizzie did her history project on the Reign of Terror because St. Emily was born in 1797, right in the midst of it.

  I told myself that Lizzie wouldn’t recognize her own mother’s behavior right now. She would hate what she was doing to me.

  But would she? Would Lizzie take my side or be on her mother’s?

  Family was family, and blood was thicker than water.

  Wasn’t it?

  But if that was true, why hadn’t my family found me yet? Why hadn’t they come for me? They were all named for saints who’d sacrificed everything without fear. I had to believe they were doing everything they could. I ran through all the possible clues they could find. The day the Porters took me, Patrick and Bea had driven right past the minivan—how could they not have spotted me? I had left my backpack by the stone wall; hadn’t someone seen me talking to Chloe? When I’d tripped crossing the street, the driver of that blue car had blasted his horn. Wouldn’t he remember?

  The toll collector: If news of my disappearance had made it to Maine, wouldn’t he realize that I was the babbling girl in the back seat of that van emblazoned with a Patriots sticker?

  And what about the navy-blue minivan itself, the family’s original one? Where had the Porters hidden it when they’d driven into Black Hall? Going by the license plates, they must have rented the white decoy somewhere in Massachusetts. Surely that was a clue.

  But who would notice a family renting a minivan?

  In my worst moments, I’d despair and wonder whether my family was even still looking for me. Asking myself that question proved how psycho I was getting, isolated in this room—of course they were, they would never stop. Would they?

  I thought I really would go crazy, that I would never hear another human voice, other than Mrs. Porter’s, but that changed.

  That day, when she brought me my dinner, Mr. Porter entered the room behind her. He was holding a TV.

  Behind them stood Chloe holding her cell phone.

  “We’re going to plug this in and let you watch whatever you want,” Mr. Porter said.

  It seemed weird and made me feel suspicious. I hadn’t mentioned TV or really even missed it. I’d had too much else on my mind. Besides, all I craved was my cell phone. Before the Porters took me, I’d had it with me always, and I sometimes felt the ghost of it in my left hand, my thumbs itching to text.

  “You can watch the news,” Mrs. Porter said. “I need you to see what’s being said about you.”

  “Your family has been interviewed,” Mr. Porter said. “They show the clips constantly. Anne passing out flyers at college, Bea sitting on your bed with your dog, Seamus. Your brothers searching the neighborhood. Your mother and father at the Westbrook State Police barracks, standing at a microphone in front of the cameras, begging for you to come home.”

  The idea of seeing everyone, even on a screen, made my heart leap. I wanted to grab the TV out of his hands and find the news channel.

  “Just one thing,” Mrs. Porter said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Chloe,” she said, beckoning.

  Chloe stepped forward, handed me her smartphone. It was almost too much to believe—my thumbs itched to dial my home number. But the screen was open to Gmail. My screen name was already typed into the login.

  “Put in your password,” Mr. Porter said.

  I nearly did—it would mean I could check my mail, send a message home. But the fact he wanted me to do that made me freeze with suspicion. I scanned their eyes for a sign that this wasn’t a trick.

  “You’re going to write a message,” Mrs. Porter said. “You’re going to tell them you’ve run away. Say you’ll go back when you figure things out.”

  “When you do this, you’ll be one step closer to being able to join us upstairs. To have more freedom,” Mr. Porter said.

  I’d always wanted to be a playwright, to act in plays. But at that minute I couldn’t have acted to save my life. I threw the phone into the hall. It clattered against the wall. Chloe swore and stalked out, picked it up, and disappeared. Mr. Porter shrugged and followed, carrying the TV. Mrs. Porter stood beside me, looking sad and disappointed more than anything else. She touched my hair, as if with the deepest regret, and she shook her head.

  As soon as she closed the door behind her, I grabbed the locked doorknob and shook it.

  “Mrs. Porter!” I called. “Wait!”

  I wanted to change my mind. I imagined what I’d given up—the chance to see my family on screen, all their faces, and hear their voices, feel their presence. I called and called for Mrs. Porter to come back, but she didn’t answer. No one did.

  I wondered if they’d give me another chance.

  I wondered if Mrs. Porter was climbing into the blue minivan, driving south toward Connecticut, toward my house, toward my mother. The realization that through my stubbornness I might have put my mother in danger made my knees buckle, and I fell down to the ground crying.

  For one week, Mrs. Porter didn’t speak to me. We sat in silence while I ate my food. Even though I was dying to get that TV, I clamped down and told myself that watching the news, even the possibility of seeing my family on the screen, wasn’t worth it. There was no way I was ever writing that email.

  Mrs. Porter didn’t have to tell me she was furious at me for my refusal. I saw the darkness in her furrowed brow, her pursed lips. I flashed, as I so often did these days, on how she used to like me. She’d always greet me with open arms and her unusual smile—not full-on, like most people’s, but three-cornered, as if her warmth contained a secret, as if half of her face was in on it and the other half resisting.

  “You think she’s so great,” Lizzie said once. Her mother had taken us to Paradise Ice Cream, the little stand overlooking the Black Hall marshes and the mouth of the Connecticut River. Mrs. Porter stood by the window, drinking iced tea and chatting with Jordan Shear’s mother, and Lizzie and I sat at one of the picnic tables, under a yellow-and-white-striped umbrella, eating our ice cream cones.

  “She is,” I said, raising my black raspberry, clinking Lizzie’s toasted coconut cone in a sort of toast.

  “She’s a street angel/house devil,” Lizzie said. “She shows one face to the world, another to our family.”

  “You’re pure angel,” Jeff Woodley said, overhearing her say that as he walked over to sit with us. He liked Lizzie; she was trying to decide how much she liked him back. He was tall, with ginger hair and a sparse beard, and he crooked his arm around her shoulders and nuzzled her neck. Then he licked her ice cream cone and she made him miss and dabbed his nose with it.

  “Are you sure I’m so angelic?” she asked, laughing.

  “Yep,” he said. “Positive.”

  That June, Jeff asked her to the Fu
ll Moon Dance at the beach club. I’d been hoping Dan would ask me, but he showed up with Gillian Bowen instead. Jordan and Alicia, each single at that time, drove together. I went solo—well, actually I tagged along with Lizzie and Jeff. By then Lizzie had decided she liked him—in fact, more than that.

  At one point, Jeff stood talking to Slater Jones and a bunch of other boys, and Lizzie and I took a spin on the dance floor. She wore a black dress with a tulle skirt twinkling with rhinestones; my dress, an Anne hand-me-down, was strapless taffeta, dark green-and-red tartan. While Lizzie wore a pair of black silk ballet flats, my favorite Doc Martens complemented my ensemble.

  “How do you know if you’re in love?” Lizzie asked me.

  I shrugged. “When you think about him, you see stars.”

  “Well, that happens when I kiss him.”

  “Enough said.”

  “Do you feel that way about Dan? When you think about him?”

  “No,” I said—even though I did—watching him slow dance with Gillian, never mind the fact the song was fast.

  “Way to lie,” Lizzie said, twirling me. We’d practiced dancing from watching my brother Mick and his girlfriend, Fiona. And Mick had learned from my parents—a couple who seemed like one single creature when they danced: They moved so well together, in grace and unison.

  That night Lizzie and Jeff had wandered down the beach. I watched them disappear into the shadows and wondered if that would ever be me and Dan, or me and someone else. The sad thing, and it really made me mad at myself, was that even seeing Dan with Gillian didn’t make the stars go away. I had written that play. The kiss hadn’t been real, but it had happened.