Pearl

by Deirdre Riordan Hall

  The sinking feeling gives way to the reality that my mother finally tried to reach me; it almost doesn’t matter what she said. Compared to finally hearing from my mother, despite the extremely questionable content of her phone call, Terran’s accusation takes second place. Fibers turn back into bone, and I stand on solid ground again. “Did you get a callback number?”

  For a moment, she looks surprised by my lack of defense, but her pitiless mask quickly returns. “Unfortunately, no. But I’m sure Connie will be happy to help you with that.”

  Just then, Connie’s apartment door, a fire hazard plastered with flyers, cards, and dorm reminders, opens.

  “I was just going to find you, Connie,” Terran says, her words circling me, taunting me, ready to go in for the kill.

  Connie looks wearily from Terran to me, as if afraid, and possibly tired, of the former. “Yes, what is it?”

  “I have good reason to believe Pearl wasn’t at her mother’s last weekend. Janet Jaeger called here Saturday night, looking for Pearl.”

  Connie looks back and forth between us. “Terran, that’s another weighty claim. Do you have proof? What do you say, PJ?” Connie’s kind expression invites me to tell the truth, but survival trumps honesty.

  “There was a mix-up. I spent the first night at my dad’s, then I was supposed to go to her house, but when I got there she hadn’t gotten home yet, and I forgot my key, so she called the only number she had, trying to let me know she was home. We connected later. No worries,” I say. The lies slip easily off my silver tongue.

  Terran’s glare sinks into my skin like rows of teeth. “That’s not true,” she says. “Pearl is lying.”

  Connie takes a deep breath.

  “I spoke to her mother,” Terran says.

  “Correction. I thought you said she spoke at you,” I say curtly.

  “Semantics. You wouldn’t believe the things she said to me, Connie. She used words that would burn your mind with their obscenity. She called me a mother . . .” she whispers, gazing at the floor, the picture of innocence.

  Connie flinches.

  Terran gives one final push, but flounders. “She was talking about crack, the illegal drug.”

  Connie’s face scrunches. “You shouldn’t believe rumors. I doubt PJ’s mother would say things like that.”

  I shrug my shoulders, because she would say that and worse, but for Connie’s benefit, my shrug means that I don’t know what’s going on. Then my spinnerets weave wonders. “She was at a wedding shower for her friend Carrie Crackett. She probably had a bit too much to drink. I apologize if she offended you, Terran.” I try a smile, but the way her lips pucker and fold into her mouth wipes it from my face.

  Connie edges toward the door. “Thank you, PJ. That was very nice of you. Be sure to solidify your plans better with your mother next time, OK?”

  By some act of mercy, she believes me. However, Terran doesn’t. After Connie steps about a yard toward the door, she whispers, “Pearl, I’m going to get you one way or another, Pearly-Pearl-Pearl,” she singsongs, imitating my mother. “You’re going down.”

  I start to walk away but stop. “Terran, the thing is, being down here, where I already am, there’s really nowhere else to fall. You, on the other hand, you’d have a long way to go, and I promise the landing will hurt.” Before she has a chance to get in the last word, I fly up the stairs.

  As soon as I escape her seething, the density of the phone call and the ease with which I lied hit me square in the gut like a boulder.

  Without proof, Terran can do little aside from harass me. My skin is thick. I can handle it, I tell myself. However, my mother presents another matter. Experience has taught me that JJ can be a menace, not only to herself but also to everyone that she encounters. A chill trickles down my skin until my toes feel frostbit. The threat of what JJ might do this time freezes me with ragged little breaths. I feel small, a helpless child in the shadow of an unpredictable danger. Terran exposed Janet Jaeger as my mother, and it sucks, but the humiliation JJ would cause if she came to Laurel Hill would be permanent. Could she find her way to Viv Brooks? Am I safe? Is she?

  The next day, I pass on Terran’s warning, along with Mark’s observation, to Grant, suggesting he tell Pepper, who will most certainly tell Sorel, telephone style. I hope that nothing is lost in translation. I don’t leave time to acknowledge what happened in Canada or the electricity that crackles between us. Now, back at Laurel Hill, we’ve both withdrawn to our respective corners. What could be is too big for either of us to scale, because our fragile hearts are afraid of the stakes. Like I told Terran, down here where I am is easier, safer.

  To Grant I add, “Sorel and I haven’t spoken since we returned. I don’t feel the need to say sorry, but it seems the absence of an apology has kept her distant.” Conveniently, just as I leave to go to the library, and Grant heads to his dorm, she and Pepper walk up the path to Viv Brooks.

  I don’t involve myself in awkward silence. “I was just telling Grant that Terran said Mark told her he saw me getting into your car. She has it in for me.”

  “That’s not my problem,” Sorel says. Her eyes are heavy, and the bosky scent of pot hangs faintly in the air.

  “It’s not, but you should know Mark isn’t someone to be trusted, especially if you’re smoking with him in the woods.”

  That gets her tongue. “Oh.”

  “About the ride back, I was out of line yelling at you.” I waver about whether to plow ahead, filling in the gaps in her assumptions about my past. Terran shared enough info for anyone curious to search JJ on the Internet. “I, uh, really am a city girl. A street kid. Whatever. What Terran said was true. We were living in a homeless shelter. My mother started a fire. I almost died. I’ve got nothing. Nothing to prove, no home, no family, nothing,” I say sadly, my heart bleeding with the truth.

  There’s no shock or sympathy. “Don’t worry about it,” Sorel says. In fact, based on her score book of cool or whatever, her nod of approval suggests I moved up a rank, not that it matters.

  Chapter 24

  I don’t trust the spring. It’s fickle like me, and I definitely don’t trust myself. Not with Grant, not with behaving, not with the temptation of the cache of pills hidden in my room. The spring months are likely to jump into league with winter, dumping heaps of snow on the newly sprouted crocuses or cloaking the sunshine just to provide people puddles to splash in. I’m not a conservative person, but I don’t agree with what the whimsical, you-only-live-once types say—splashing in filthy puddles is gross.

  That’s exactly what Terran does when she passes me on the path back to the dorm, soaking me with frigid, dirty water.

  I shiver when I enter Viv Brooks, eager for a warm shower. “PJ?” Connie says, intercepting me before I have a chance to rush upstairs. I expect her to say something about the necklace, the weekend escapade, or some other misdeed, but instead she leads me into the small office that divides her apartment from the rest of the dorm. A man I don’t recognize sits in a chair beside the desk. I fold into the other, wrapping my arms around my chest.

  “Pearl, this is Dr. Greenbrae,” Connie says.

  Did they find the pills? Maybe Mark and Terran provided proof of the trip to Canada. Beads of cold sweat dot my forehead.

  Connie takes a deep breath, looking from the doctor to me. She soundlessly opens and closes her jaw, as if she wants words to come out of her mouth but her lips and tongue won’t cooperate.

  The doctor clears his throat. “Pearl, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but your mother has passed away,” Dr. Greenbrae says.

  I hear the words, the sounds Connie couldn’t make, reach my ears, trying to find a way past the fog in my brain.

  The room starts to spin, and the walls feel like they’re collapsing in on me. My body sinks deeply into the chair, and my stomach, ever faithful to nerves, convulses into kno
ts. Weakness paralyzes my legs. With one crippling sentence, my entire body dismantles into its raw parts. Connie puts her hand on what used to be my arm. I pull it away.

  There’s only one possibility. Overdose lands in my mind with a thud, but I can’t think about the how right now. I only want to scream, Why?

  Instead, someone in the room says the words “No. No. No.” Then I realize it’s me. I repeat them again, slowly shaking my head. My mother is invincible. She could stay up for days. She’s immortal. Nothing touched her except alcoholism, addiction, poverty, and abuse. But she survived it all. She couldn’t have—but I can’t even let myself think of that final word to complete the sentence.

  “Everything will be all right,” the doctor and Connie alternatingly assure me. They say they’re there for me, but I have never felt more alone.

  I’m actually alone.

  I suck air, but am not sure I still want to breathe. Despite what they say, I won’t be all right, not for a long time.

  “Pearl, I want you to come to my office in the health center tomorrow. In the meantime, is there anyone you’d like to call?” Dr. Greenbrae asks.

  Who told them this? How did they find out? I don’t understand, but like Connie, I can’t get the words to form on my lips. They say more, but I don’t hear anything but thunder in my ears, a storm brewing in my belly and lightning flashing behind my eyes, striking me over and over and over.

  It’s dark by the time they reluctantly let me leave the claustrophobic office. As I walk through the familiar hall, the posters and signs on the walls look abstract, like I’m in a museum of my former life.

  Instead of going upstairs to my room, I walk out the door and through the puddles and melting snow, which reveal bits of grass on the sloping lawn in front of the dorm. I stand in the center, gaze upward into the clear night sky, the stars like pinprick diamonds mocking me with their beauty, and shout, “Why?”

  Then the tears come, slowly at first, like an engine building steam, then so rapidly one doesn’t have a chance to slip down my cheek before the other one collides into it. Quickly, my face is wet, and I shiver in the cold. My body spasms with a cough, a reminder of my life going up in flames.

  I hear crunching in the snow. I dread Connie or Dr. Whatever trying to console me again, but instead of Connie’s sweet perfume, I smell tobacco. Sorel, Pepper, and Grant appear. Arms wrap around me. Sorel asks me what’s wrong, but only shuddering sobs come out of my body. I don’t care that they see me like this. I don’t care about anything.

  Grant puts one strong arm around me. Sorel flanks me on the other side. Pepper is somewhere in the mix, and they herd me back toward the dorm. The boys come as far as the foyer. Grant kisses my cold, wet cheek.

  Sorel helps me up the stairs and into my bed. I hear her whispering to someone else in the room. I close my eyes against the dim desk light. Scanning the darkness within, I see nothing but the chasm of my broken heart.

  As I lie in the twin bed, in room twenty-two, in Vivian Brookwood Dormitory, at Laurel Hill Preparatory School, I no longer feel a sense of gratitude. In its place is emptiness, a desolate vacuum of nothingness. There’s no chime of hope on the wind that my life will be different. The smell of ash fills my nose. I should have died in the fire; it would have spared me this pain. My body aches as if the train wreck of Janet’s life has struck me full on. I’ll never be the same.

  I wake in the midafternoon, the quiet of the dorm revealing the time of day. I sneak to the bathroom for some water. When I return, I peel back a pair of heavy socks, neatly folded together, and extract the pills from my hiding place. I pop two in my mouth, swallow the rest of the water, and get back in bed. Sorry, Dr. Greenbrae, I’ll be treating this on my own.

  As I settle back into bed, an unbidden reel of images of my mother streams through my head.

  There was the time she tried curling her hair, but it turned out looking like the paper fans I used to make to cool myself off on hot summer nights.

  I see her wearing a hospital gown when I visited her in the psychiatric ward. Her cheeks fuller and her skin clear. I remember how buoyant I felt that day; she seemed so happy to see me.

  I remember the disaster and the ensuing laughter when we tried to make cookies from the government-issued peanut butter and other dry goods doled out for Thanksgiving one year. She’d used salt instead of sugar, but we ate them anyway.

  I recall how when she was high, after I’d go to bed, she’d check on me incessantly to make sure I still breathed. Although I’d feign sleep, I could smell her musky scent and sharp breath as she leaned over me, a warped version of a mother tucking in her child. It wasn’t normal, but still, I’d give almost anything if my door opened and her head poked in right at this moment. Sober or high, I’d take it.

  I recall her passing me on Delancey Street, looking right at me, or possibly right through me, and not acknowledging me or maybe not wanting me to recognize her, as strung out as she was.

  Tears drop from my eyes, pooling on my pillow. Continuously, my mind recalls moments, snippets of memories of my mother and me. After some time, the memories become heavier, like the images move through something as viscous as the past.

  My body feels like jelly, spread thin upon the bed. I drift away from memories of my mother and toward Grant. I try to claw my way back to her. I find myself in a boat, but then as I struggle to get to shore, it capsizes, and I sink deeper and deeper into the internal ickiness that swells inside of me. I float further within and then drift to sleep.

  Someone rubs my shoulder. I blink open my eyes and see Sorel holding a tray on her lap as she sits on the edge of my bed.

  “I brought you something to eat. How’re you doing?”

  I roll over, putting my back to her. I don’t want Sorel. I want my mother. I want her to console me. To assure me everything will be fine. I want her to rub my back, brush my hair, and hold me, hold me, hold me forever and never let me go.

  I hear Sorel slide the tray onto my desk. She kneels beside the bed and says softly, “Grant wanted me to read this to you. It’s Robert Frost.” She clears her throat and recites a familiar poem.

  Then, in the darkness, I hear the door open and close.

  Deep in the night, my comforter lifts and a whoosh of cold prickles my skin. Grant’s long body slides in behind me, quietly breathing in my hair. He holds me. The familiar smell of pine and tobacco, mint and devotion, wafts to my nose, then a hand gropes for mine, and I know, someday, some distant day, I might be fine. But first, I have miles to go.

  Chapter 25

  After the third day, Connie appears in my room, catching me awake. She launches right into what must have been a carefully scripted speech. “I’m so very sorry for your loss. I wish I’d have met your mother, PJ.”

  “No, you don’t,” I mumble.

  “Dr. Greenbrae would like you to go to his office today. He just wants to talk to you.” She forces a smile. “He’ll be expecting you at one, OK?” She gives another awkward smile and leaves.

  My body coils, and my jaw clenches. I want to yell at her, but I don’t have the strength to shoot the messenger. I slump back in bed, close my eyes, and will the world to still itself, just so I never have to move again.

  Charmindy pops in after lunch. “PJ, are you awake?”

  I open my eyes halfway.

  “How are you doing? Sorry, dumb question. I’m so sorry, sorry about all of it. If you want to talk . . .”

  I don’t answer.

  “Connie mentioned you have an appointment. I just thought I’d offer to help you get dressed and find the office.”

  She gets a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt out of my closet. I painstakingly get dressed. The tray of food from the other night still rests on my desk, notebooks and texts stacked around it, punctuating life before and after.

  I slide on my boots and trudge listlessly at Charmindy’s hee
ls toward the health center.

  “I have to get to French. See you later,” Charmindy says, leaving me in front of a door bearing a rectangular brown sign that reads Dr. Greenbrae, PhD.

  I stand outside, my hand on the doorknob, disinclined to enter.

  The first time I saw a therapist was part of one of Janet’s various rehabilitation programs. The hazy memory of therapy involves puppets and playacting. During the second stint, the doctor asked me questions about my interests and friends. I was all too happy to comply; no one ever seemed to have much interest in me specifically. Though later I understood the questions were to get me comfortable, so she could ask about my relationship with my mom.

  The most recent time I had to see a shrink was because, in a delusion, Janet convinced herself I had something wrong with me mentally. Anxiety met anger as I worried maybe she was right, Mother knows best and all that. But she had the issues. She fried her brain on drugs. It wasn’t fair of her to make that my problem. Perhaps she didn’t remember the emotional difficulties of puberty from her own teenage years, but I acted like a normal teenager—confused by the hormonal changes going on in my body and dealing with the lifestyle choices Janet imposed upon me. How’s that for psychoanalysis? That’ll be thirty dollars, thank you.

  Fueled by my memories of this injustice, I stand mutinously outside the door. It opens, and I’m face-to-face with the balding doctor. It’s as if he sensed my readiness to bolt.

  “Pearl, so glad you came,” he says with a practiced joviality.

  I stand on the threshold, my hard eyes fixed on nothing in particular.

  “Come on in, have a seat, make yourself comfortable.” He returns to his leather swivel chair.

  I scan the room. A wooden bookshelf spans the wall, stuffed with thick texts with titles like Managing the Anxious Mind and Listen to What Your Teens Don’t Say. Behind the doctor’s desk, a window with dusty mini blinds lets in minimal light and a droopy plant wilts in a plastic pot on the sill. On the front of his desk, folders and papers wait for filing, and three plastic toys filled with water and colored gel that drips slowly when you turn them upside down invite curiosity. When I was younger, toys like that fascinated me with how slowly and uniquely the gel oozed. The wooden chair for patients gets nothing more than my insolence.