“Of course you are! You’ll be all done with being hanged, drawn, and quartered. And we’ll be counselors! After all these years. It’s finally going to be our turn. Our time,” she said. Her accent was just regular now. She was only herself.
I hadn’t thought it over really, but just then I knew. “I’m not going back. I’m going to be volunteering with Mabel. In hospitals and old-age homes. I’m training her now.”
“That sounds perfectly dreadful,” Nora said.
“And maybe I want to try and work at a vet’s. Maybe Mabel’s vet even.”
“Dear God,” Nora said, British once again. “Is this for college applications? No one cares if you like animals. That’s not going to get you into college. Sign up for Model UN or debate and call it a day.”
“True,” I said. “About the apps.”
The train was getting closer. “Well, there you have it anyway,” I said. “I gotta go. I’m about to lose service,” I said, holding the phone up to the oncoming train.
“Talk soon, luv,” she said.
“Talk soon, Nora,” I said.
I imagined watching sick dogs come into the office, and I imagined them leaving healthy.
I hopped off the rails, slipped my phone in my back pocket, watched the train speed by. Chugga chugga chugga. Everything was different now. I held my face up to the wind. Where was Connor? Was he okay? When would he come back to me? Why wasn’t I worried? For some reason I wasn’t worried.
I imagined holding kittens and snakes and birds with broken wings.
I watched the train recede in the distance, and I went to get my penny. It was flat and smooth and as warm as a stone on the beach.
What can I say? I just felt so happy.
How Lost
I expected not to hear from Connor, but I didn’t expect it would be for so long. It took about a week and then, suddenly I got nervous. Very nervous. Was he all right? Did he ever even get back to school? He was lost again. With Connor that could mean just so many things. How lost? How deep into the fairy-tale forest did he go? Would he find his own way out? How long would it take? Would I have to grab the nearest woodsman and my own ax to find him?
Why had I just assumed that he was fine and I was fine and we were fine? What kind of moron was I? Why had I not been nervous? Because the longer Connor didn’t contact me, the longer I realized that I was still the girl in the hospital, waiting for the sound of a boy and his dog to come walking down the hall.
And beneath all that was also that Connor had revealed himself to be someone else. He was a little sad and also broken. What do broken people do? Many different things.
I was broken but I was healing.
“Connor,” I said into his voice mail. “Connor! Please call me.”
“Hello? Hello. It’s Lizzie. Please, tell me you’re okay.”
I called always. Like, thirty times. I called at least thirty times by the time the letter arrived.
Letter 3
This is how I feel: that I will never be good enough for you now. That you are this pure angelic fixed person and that while you think I helped you, I didn’t because I used you to help me and now you’re better and I’m still the same and you need to go be better with someone better.
This is how I feel: that you got better, you were cured, but that I will never be cured, because there’s no Thing to cut out or draw blood about. No IV.
This is how I feel: oatmeal.
This is how I feel: that you are so special. That you don’t see it at all. How smart and funny and unique and pretty you are. It’s not for me to tell you: look at yourself. But you must know, Lizzie, that you are moving through the universe with power, and that night on the shore, even the trees noticed it.
This is how I feel: at sea will never mean anything bad again.
This is how I feel: that I don’t care that I don’t know about the future. The immediate one. Like where I’ll go. I got kicked out of Stone Mountain. I really wasn’t allowed to leave on the weekends. It’s pretty much lockdown there. I snuck out and took the bus home and took my car. And it was worth it. That moment when I saw you see me on the boat. That was worth everything.
This is how I feel: that even though I’m back in DC (!!!) and even if my parents are keeping me away, I don’t need to see you because I can feel you. I feel you everywhere. But I want to let you go. I have to.
This is how I feel: wherever they send me next, you will always be with me. Verlaine too.
This is how I feel: horse blanket. Swing. Cassiopeia. Open window. Raisins. Moonlight.
Yours always,
Connor
Making Contact
You’re in DC? Seriously?
Connor. Please pick up the phone. Hello!
Connor. I got your letter. Can you please talk to me?
Connor. This is Lizzie. Come on! How long have you been here?
Hello? Are you ever going to call me back?
Fuck you, Connor. I’m not going to call you again.
How many messages do I have to leave here?
Fuck you, Connor.
Hello?
And then, finally, there was a voice.
“Yes?” the voice, the woman’s voice, said.
I was so shocked to hear a human that it took me a long moment to respond. “Oh, hi! This is Lizzie Stoller.” I paused again. I was pretty sure who I was talking to, but I wasn’t positive. “Is Connor there, please? I’m sorry, I thought I was calling his cell phone.”
“It is his cell. This is his mother,” the female human said.
“Oh!” What a great way to meet Connor’s mom! I thought. But then I thought, something terrible has happened or is about to happen. “Hello, Mrs. Bryant. Sorry to leave so many messages. I just haven’t heard from Connor in a while.” Like forever, I thought. It has been seven centuries since I have heard your son’s voice.
She sighed.
I was silent, a kind that was waiting for someone else to break it.
“I’m very sorry, Elizabeth, but Connor can’t talk to you or see you,” Connor’s mother said.
The last adult to call me Elizabeth was my great-aunt Leonora from Buffalo, and that was at her husband’s funeral. But of course that was not the important part, and the important part just then began to register. My heart beat in my ears.
“I know you’re a lovely person,” she continued, “but Connor has exercised a lot of poor judgment around you.”
“Around me?” I said. Because what was I supposed to say? Again I found myself out of the land of age appropriateness. I was shaking.
“Well, poor judgment in general, but now, with you. He can’t see you anymore. I know it’s painful for both of you. I’m sorry about that. I really am.”
I began to cry, as softly as I could.
“I’m sorry, dear. I’m just trying to protect my son. He needs to find his own way right now. This has been hard on everyone.”
I was still crying.
“I hope you can understand,” she said. It was a little bit of a question but not one that was asking for an answer.
“Yes,” I said. “Can you please tell him that I called?” I wondered if he had gotten any of my messages.
“Of course I will.”
“Can you please tell him that I”—I stammered because I didn’t know how much to say—“that I miss him?” is what I decided on.
“I will certainly tell him that. And I can tell you that he misses you too. Let’s just try this for a while and see. Let things cool down. I don’t have to tell you that leaving school and taking out the boat and bringing you to the beach house was not responsible or acceptable,” she said.
“No. I know.”
“I know you’ve been through a lot. Both of you really have. Not what most teenagers deal with. But let me tell you because I’m older and I know. That is not enough. It feels like it is, but it isn’t.”
I was sniffling but I didn’t try to cover it up. I couldn’t tell Connor’s mom that it w
as enough. That what we’d been through was everything. Because she was a lawyer, and I’m sure there was some statute that proved me wrong. And because she was Connor’s mother and she was holding him hostage.
“I will tell Connor I spoke to you, Elizabeth.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Good-bye then,” she said.
“Good-bye, Mrs. Bryant,” I said before I threw my phone across the room and threw myself on my bed. Good-bye Connor Good-bye Connor Good-bye Connor: those were the only words I could hear or see until Zoe knocked on my door and called me down for dinner.
Finally, Listening
“Not cool,” Stella said when I called and told her about the letter and the conversation with Connor’s mom. “So he just never went back to school? After we saw him at the marina? He totally lied to you. So not cool.”
Again, I thought, but I did not say this. “But did you hear what I said about the letter?” I asked her. “It was so sweet and also he seemed so . . . pained.”
“Read it to me,” she said.
I was on my bed, picking at my blue comforter. I hated blue now. Everything about it. “No, Stella, that would be a betrayal.”
“You’re kidding, right? You have got to be kidding.”
“No! I’m surprised you are asking me. You’re so, I don’t know, moral.”
“The guy has sex with you and doesn’t call you. He says he’s doing one thing and he does another. He’s a liar. I think morality is sort of out the door now.”
I was silent. “I just don’t think it’s like that. Or only like that.”
“Your call.”
“Stella,” I said.
“What?”
“Come on. Don’t be mad.” Just then Frog jumped from her rock into her water. Plop.
“Sure,” she said. “Not mad. The guy’s an asshole.”
“I need to tell you,” I said. “What happened.”
“There’s more?” she asked me.
“So much more.”
“How could there possibly be more?”
“Not sure you’ll think he’s less of an asshole, but here goes. . . .”
So. I told Stella the story. About the Thing. Everything about it. It felt so good, this . . . unburdening. And I realized then that I really wanted to see how she saw it, from what slant of refracted Stella prism light.
When I was done with the story, the story of Connor, Stella was silent. “Wow. Well, it explains a lot,” she said. “Here I thought he was just this sort of angel taking care of you and showing up for you and doing all the right things until he started doing the wrong ones.”
“Well. He was that. He is that.”
“Yes and no.”
“Yes.”
“Hey,” said Stella. “Thank you for telling me all this.”
“I haven’t told anyone. Not even my sister. No one. Do not repeat, okay?”
“Of course not. Of course not. I’m just trying to process everything. Explains a lot but doesn’t make it all better, does it? All it does is make it more complicated.”
“Yes,” I said. “That is what I’m saying. That has been the problem, all along.”
“So complicated.”
“I mean,” I said, “do you think Connor is a bad person?”
“I don’t even know what that means. What does being a bad person actually entail? I don’t know him. It definitely seems like he did a bad thing. That is not really up for debate.”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”
“Do good people do bad things? All the time,” Stella said.
“Anyway, with all this”—I shrugged, like I was shaking off the conversation—“can you please tell me something now? Something important? So I don’t feel like the asshole always talking, never listening.” So I don’t feel like Nora, I thought. Please don’t let me be a version of Nora, the one without the Brit vocab and fake accent.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m good at listening.”
“No, I need you to tell me something. Something important. So we can be a little equal.”
“How to choose,” Stella said.
“Choose,” I said.
“Okay.”
I was silent.
“Okay, here goes. So Jared?”
“Yes! Jared!”
“He’s a senior at Penn,” she said. I wished I could have seen Stella’s face right then. Like if she was proud or ashamed of this fact.
“Wow. Old man.” I laughed.
“Well, I knew him from DC. When I was a freshman, I used to go see shows a lot. Downtown.”
“Really. That’s insane.” Just so cool. When I was a freshman, I was still making Shrinky Dinks with my mother.
“Well. I was just so angry. My parents were getting divorced. No one noticed me and I would sneak out, and the music, that kind of screaming and stuff, it helped me,” she said. “I never drank or did drugs or anything like that. It was really the music for me. Like I needed it.”
“You are amazing,” I said. “How you know yourself. And how you do what you need to.”
“Jared hung out there too. 9:30. Velvet Lounge. U Street. He went to Wilson.”
“Teen dream,” I said. I guess it was kind of mean. But it was so calculated cool. So.
“Not exactly. We started going out when I was fourteen. And he was eighteen.”
“And you stayed together for so long. That’s kind of amazing, Stella.” I picked up David B’s God’s eye. I held it up to the light. A talisman.
“Actually, it was statutory rape.”
“Wow. I was not expecting that.” I put down the God’s eye and went to my bed. “Did he rape you?”
“Well, legally, right? Look, I’m not saying I felt raped. I was totally into him and into it and complicit, but legally, that’s what it is. And it’s illegal for a reason. I mean, what did I know when I was fourteen? I was like some weird fucking child bride.”
“Totally. I totally see what you mean.”
“We went out my whole high school career. And I kept it this secret. From my parents, from friends. You went off for a night. I would go for whole weekends. I lied all the time. I never did anything in high school. No football game or school play or mock trial or science club. I was always with Jared, wherever he wanted me to be,” she said. “And when he wasn’t around, I was just studying and reading and playing guitar and writing in my diary about my parents’ hateful divorce. That’s why my grades are so awesome.”
“That’s crazy! I mean, I just had no idea,” I said.
“How could you? You never know what’s up with anyone, do you? I mean, how would you know? I would have to tell you. And you would have to tell me.”
“Are you going to press charges?” I asked. Was that even the way you said it, the way you asked?
“No.”
I had thought Stella would. She’s just that way. As in justice pursuer.
“I probably should, but I think it would only be out of spite. I think if he was dating a fourteen-year-old now, I would. To protect her. But he’s dating just a regular twenty-year-old. Just another regular girl. Who isn’t me.”
“Are you crying?” I asked.
“Me? No. Why would I be crying? It’s done. It made me me. Here I am. Me. And I’m free now. Hello.”
“Hello, Stella B.” Stella. Another person I would never know if my life had just stayed on its regular course. If I was just me before, Stella would have never had a word to say to me.
“Hello, Elizabeth S. Now we know everything.”
For some bizarre reason, I pictured those paper towels at the top of the bathroom stall door, crumpled up in Stella’s hand. Here, she’d said.
“Everything,” I agreed. And I was also thinking: What could I possibly offer Stella? What could she ever possibly want from me?
“Take,” she’d said.
I wanted to give. I was just so ready to give.
Zoe had started coming to Petiquette with Greta—my mother had had it
—and she and Stella and I would hang out afterward. They were both in the same grade with those same about-to-be-going concerns. But I was the link between them in their differentness and sameness. Their humanness. My sister. She was all perfect on the outside, nails pink, lip gloss, hair in a ponytail, good clogs. And I’ve already said what Stella was and was not.
Even though the only person I told about the accident, the Thing—ever—was Stella, I told Zoe everything else. It was one night when we all went to the park at Cabin John and sat out in the cold watching the dogs let out all their energy from having to sit and stay and shake everyone’s hand. All the stars. They really are the same everywhere. Just wherever you are looking up at the sky.
“And now I can’t even talk to him,” I said.
“Give it time,” Zoe said.
“I hate that expression,” I said.
“Well? Can you imagine? Connor’s parents are probably just recovering from everything,” Stella said.
“Recovering from what?” Zoe said. “I think my sister is the one who’s recovering.”
I shot Stella a warning look. Would her ethics make her speak or be quiet? I now knew her well enough to be pretty sure it was the second option.
“Don’t panic,” Stella said to me, and I didn’t know if we were talking about telling my sister the story or about Connor. “He has always come and gone. I’m not sure that’s okay in general, but it makes sense for now. Right?”
“Okay,” I said, totally panicked. I knew where he was now, that he was okay, if okay was exactly what you’d call it, but would I ever see him or hear his voice again? And forget about touching or holding.
I might not ever see him again. And in the back of my mind, I could not stop considering Mrs. Bryant’s last few words to me: how maybe everything that had happened to us was what brought us together. That it was the only thing we had.
But how do you know? Who’s to say? What makes anyone connect, click click, and what makes that connection stick? I want to know who is to say. Mrs. Bryant? Is there some kind of law or statute for that? She could be right. That there might one day be other things that brought us together with someone. Separately.
We Were Never Here Page 20