Girl, Unframed

by Deb Caletti

  “No.” I put my hand over the mark. It wasn’t his business anyway. It might have been someone’s business, but not his.

  “Shit,” he said. “Goddamn it.” He shook his head, furious, like he didn’t know what to do with me. He floored it through the light, now red.

  I rode in embarrassed silence. The humiliation sat like the dense, dank fog. We were clearly near one of the piers now. I know, I know—there are lots of piers in that city. Maybe it was near Pier 70? I’d tell you if I knew, but I don’t. I think I saw a sign for 70, but I can’t remember for sure. We were in a shipyard of some kind. I could see big cranes, too, the ones that take the containers off ocean transports. But we were driving around to the back part of a brick building. A warehouse, or at least that’s what I thought it was, with a chain-link fence all around.

  It was hard to see because Jake backed the end of the truck up near the building. In the side mirror, though, I saw the orange glowing tips of cigarettes in the setting sun. Three guys were waiting on the stairwell that led to the door. There were a few Styrofoam containers between them, as if they’d decided to have some food while they waited for Jake. I saw the Lamborghini parked there too.

  “Stay here.” Jake yanked the brake. The headlights illuminated the fence and an abandoned lot, which was overgrown with grass and weeds. He flipped off the lights. He hopped out. The door clanged shut. Max and I looked at each other.

  “No idea,” I said to him. I tried to make my voice calm, because he’d just been through something awful, but I didn’t feel calm. I mean, what the heck were we doing there? It was off. Way, way off. I was uneasy. I was disgusted with Jake and disgusted with myself about the mark on my neck. I tried to call Lila again but only got her singsongy message, which made me want to throw my phone out the freaking window. I mean, how could she let this happen? What kind of mother was she?

  And then things got worse. The three guys got to their feet, and I couldn’t see anything. It had gotten dark, and I could see a little halo of light appear, as if maybe a door had opened in that building.

  There was a terrible clatter, so loud and jarring that Max tried to scurry to his feet even though we were in the cab of the truck and that was impossible. He started to growl at the sudden sound, and I held his collar. I whispered reassuring things into his velvet ear. The back of the truck was rolling up. I couldn’t see this from the cab, but I could hear it. I could feel the rumble. In the side mirror, I caught a glimpse of—what are those low things with wheels called? Dollies. A dolly. I saw a huge dolly, and the three men were pushing it. It took all of them to move it, because there was this enormous thing wrapped in plastic on it. I couldn’t tell what it was. It looked like a big body. A huge dead body. Too huge to be human, though.

  I couldn’t see anything, but I could sense the effort, you know, of them moving that thing up the ramp. I heard them call muffled directions to each other, swearing. It was a cool summer night with those clouds, but I cranked my window a little. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear, but I thought I’d better listen anyway.

  And then there was a tremendous thunk. Jake said, “You fucking idiot! Be careful.” One of the other guys said, “You dumb fuck.” And then another said, “What do you expect? This thing weighs a million tons. Jesus.”

  The rolling sound came again. And then finally, the truck door opened. Only, it wasn’t Jake. It was one of the guys. I don’t know how to describe him—he just looked like a guy. Like a younger version of Jake, stocky, but with brown hair. Jake came around to my window. “Jimmy’ll drive you back. See you at home.” And then to Jimmy: “Don’t get into an accident or anything, fuck.”

  Jake was gone. I was in this truck with a strange man and Max. I probably felt a little like Max did, where the day had at first seemed so awesome and then had turned into something awful. I didn’t want to be in that small space with that guy with no way out. The man reeked of cigarettes and whatever garlic thing he had for dinner. Max sniffed his pant legs.

  “Sick dog, huh?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  He reversed the truck and then pulled forward. He drove slowly and carefully around the building.

  “What’s back there?” I asked.

  He looked over at me and then really looked, as if seeing me for the first time. And then he grinned. “A beautiful naked woman,” he said, and laughed. “Made of stone.”

  I turned away, stared out into the foggy night. I didn’t respond, but I flushed. I sat against the door, as far from him as possible. When we were on the road, he looked over at me again, and the corner of his mouth rose in a smirk. He could see that I was afraid, and he found it amusing. He wouldn’t be afraid in a car like that, or in an elevator, or a parking garage. He never would be.

  “You want music? We can turn on some music.”

  “No, that’s okay. I’m fine.”

  “Nice, relaxing music?” He lifted his eyebrows in an invitation.

  “I said I’m fine.”

  “Ooo-kay,” he said. “Just trying to be friendly.”

  He didn’t say another word, just drove with the corner of his lip raised in that little smile. The little smug smile that held the information, the power, the knowledge of what was or wasn’t going to happen. When we finally got home, I hurried out of there and so did Max.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said, and hated myself for it.

  It was what you were supposed to do. Have manners. Be polite. Be grateful for whatever messed-up thing they gave you.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Exhibit 49: Photo of scratched and chewed inner garage door, 716 Sea Cliff Drive

  Exhibit 50: Dog tags

  We had a huge fight, Lila and I, when I got inside. I was so mad at her, I could barely speak. I put a bowl of water for Max in my room. His bed was already in there, but I would keep my eye on him like the vet said to. One of us had to be a responsible adult around there.

  “Baby?” Lila shouted up the stairs. And why did I always have to go to her, huh, whenever she shouted?

  “Come lay down, bud,” I said to Max.

  “Baaa-by! Come here and tell me what happened. I got your message.”

  I sat on my bed and folded my arms and wondered what I was doing in that place. I wanted to go home. To my real home. Where things were nice and good. I’d stay in that empty dorm if they let me. I’d stay with no heat or food, whatever. I had a brief, pointless fantasy of putting Max in a dog crate on a plane to Seattle. I patted the bed, and Max hopped up.

  “Get your hair all over if you want,” I said to him. “You’re the only respectable person in this place.”

  “Baby!” Lila thumped on the door. “Open up! I’m talking to you! It’s late. Aren’t you hungry or anything?”

  No answer, plus I wasn’t. That whole strange, scary night had made my hunger vanish.

  “Are you mad?”

  I rolled my eyes at Max. I’m sure he would have rolled his eyes back if he could.

  “Syd-Syd, open up this minute, or I’m going to go downstairs and get a hammer and bash my way in.” Max’s ear twitched. The pounding on the door was upsetting him, so I got up and flung it open. I didn’t even want to see her face. God, beauty could be ugly.

  “What?” she said. “Why are you so mad?” Really, I was clenching my teeth, and my hands were fists at my sides.

  “You left your chocolates right on the table.”

  “How was I supposed to know he’d get up there?”

  “You’re supposed to think about these things. You’re supposed to think about other people’s safety.”

  “Well, he’s okay, by the look of it.”

  “He could have died. And then I had to ride home alone with your boyfriend’s creepy associate. After they did God knows what with some giant statue.”

  “What are you talking about? I thought you were at the vet.”

  “We were at the vet. And then we were at some scary warehouse with a bunch of guys and they were moving some gi
ant statue or something. In the dark? When no one’s around? Come on, Lila. Open your eyes.” This made it sound like I knew what was going on, but I didn’t.

  “What statue?”

  “I don’t know! How am I supposed to know? You’re supposed to know!”

  Well, I know now. The beautiful naked woman was that statue the Aphrodite of Knidos. The missing Aphrodite, from, what, the fourth century B.C.? Marble goddess of beauty, preparing for the bath that would restore her purity. And don’t ask, because you can ask and ask a million times, but I don’t know what happened to it after that.

  “He doesn’t tell me everything that goes on in his business!”

  “Well, did he tell you why he was screaming at some guy in that car I keep seeing?”

  “A car out front?”

  “Yes, a car out front. I told you before! Something’s going on. Something bad. Obviously illegal. People don’t move art around in the dark.”

  “He’s a broker! Clients sell and clients buy! Stuff moves around. People meet other people. Baby, stop yelling.”

  Lila’s eyes filled with tears. She tried to touch me, but I stepped back.

  “Where were you?”

  “We met with Evan! Then Evan and I drove out to Sea Ranch. I was working!” Evan was Evan Dunne, the director she and Riley wanted for Peyton Place. The director everyone wanted for everything, after he did Endless Kingdom.

  “With your phone off?”

  “I couldn’t have interruptions Evan Dunne? Come on! He’s perfect! He gets it. He understands Constance, how she’s gorgeous and only seems repressed—”

  “Stop it! Stop. It!” I had my fists in my hair. I was in the worst sort of hall of mirrors, where you never see your own reflection, where you begin to doubt whether you’re there at all. “I am here! I am here and all these things are happening.…”

  I started to cry in frustration. Poor Max, he had his chin on his paws. It was the worst kind of day, where you just plain give up on it. Where it seems the bad stuff will keep coming and coming until the sun rises again.

  I stared out the window at the sea. Or where the sea would be if it were visible in the darkness. It was ridiculous to feel so miserable and so alone in a house like that, where people had everything. I put my arms around myself. Tears rolled down my cheeks.

  And then I heard a sound. Oh, I’d heard it before, the wounded-animal cry, but I’d never been the one to cause it. When I turned around, I saw Lila on the bed, her face in her hands.

  “Lila.”

  She refused to look up.

  “Lila, look at me.” She lifted her head, and I saw her stricken face. It was like, I don’t know, she was a child again, like that night on the beach. A child who’d done wrong. She looked innocent and beautiful, and, shit, I remembered that she wanted things too. She wanted to be seen, because she kept trying and trying for that and it never happened. In spite of her face so large up there on theater screens, she was never seen. In spite of her face and her body in magazines and on TV, she wasn’t. I was the only one who saw her, really. And because I did, I felt, you know, that it was my job to take care of her. I felt responsible for her. She was my baby, not the other way around, as much as I wished that weren’t true.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. Of course, I’m sorry means a lot of things. Sometimes it just means Never mind.

  She was sobbing, though.

  “Lila, it’s all right.”

  I knelt beside the bed. I put my arms around her. I felt bad and guilty. I wasn’t sure what she might do in this sort of state. I mean, there were all those pill bottles. I shouldn’t have been so hard on her.

  “I’m doing the best I can,” she cried.

  That night, after Jake finally came home, I heard their voices. More fighting. The Summer of Fighting, that’s what this film should have been named. Dark Summer. Endless Summer. Frightening Summer. I put my pillow over my head. Visions of the day spun in a disturbing mix. Nicco and the fire between us. Jake, with his finger touching the mark on my neck. That statue.

  Maybe it was Jake’s. Or maybe it was stolen. I was confused about what belonged to who, who was allowed to take what, what was mine and mine alone. And it gave me the creeps, the way Jake was guarding my own body. Hovering over my “purity” and virginity like those dads who threaten the guy who comes to date their daughter, their prize, the prize they’ll one day hand over to the man they approve of. The whole virgin thing was seriously messed up—how could you be revered and sacrificed to the gods? Why was virginity always taken or lost instead of just given? Why were you defiled and deflowered, as if your cleanliness and true beauty were gone forever? And what was so dangerous about me having sex, compared to a guy? Lila was right—even my father didn’t protect my purity, but then again, he didn’t protect me at all. He’d fled the scene, leaving me to hold things that were way too heavy for me. Like a mother, one made of fragile marble.

  And then—even through the pillow—I heard it. Those words, yelled: all day alone with Evan Dunne.

  That was what they were fighting about? Jealousy? Not stolen art or irresponsible mothers? Jake was jealous. The “jealous type.” Which means: You’re mine, and I’ll decide when I share. The jealous type is a toddler. The jealous type is an insecure baby, apologies to babies.

  The jealous type is dangerous when someone touches his stuff.

  She was an object to everyone, and I was an object to them, and we were Woman I and Woman II and Jacqueline and the Aphrodite of Knidos, and that charcoal study Jake showed me a few days before, Nude in a Black Armchair. I mean, Nude in a Black Armchair. God, she didn’t even get to be Woman. Just Nude. Breasts and body, stolen, gazed upon, owned, going back to the fourth century B.C. Images with dangerous, pasted-on mouths. Here is my face, assholes, I wanted to shout down through the generations. Here is my voice.

  Let’s just say it was a bad time, a very bad time, for Meredith to come visit.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Exhibit 51: Sworn statement of James (Jimmy) Columbo

  “A car? Like, a limo car?”

  It was so good to see Meredith. But it was weird, too. It had been only eight weeks, but so much had happened. Nicco felt like a fracture in the earth after a quake, the before on one side, the after on the other. Those legs in the boat before I left, the ones with the knobby knees and the child bruises, they were long and tan and wanted to be wrapped around Nicco, and I had covered the mark on my neck with a dab of concealer. When Meredith got off the plane, it was like seeing your old friend from middle school. That happy familiarity, but the distance, too. You were the same person you were then, but definitely not the same person.

  “Yes but no. More like a town car. Lila didn’t want to welcome you here with some cab.” Lila would never get up that early to meet Meredith herself was more the truth.

  “Cool.” It sounded casual, but she didn’t look casual. Meredith’s eyes were all excited.

  I could tell Meredith liked it, the way the driver opened the door for her and took her luggage and asked if the temperature in the car was okay. She opened the bottle of water that was offered and drank. She’d been talking, talking, about Cora and how she’d gotten boy crazy, or really, Bryce crazy, because Bryce was the guy Cora had met at the softball game. And then about Hoodean, and how he had broken his wrist at Shilshole when he was trying to spike the volleyball, showing off for Sarah, which pissed Meredith off. I’d never noticed it before, but maybe she liked Hoodean, who’d always seemed like a brother to me.

  She stopped talking, though, as we got out of the airport area and into the city. I felt kind of shy with her. Her neck was craned, and she kept looking at me to see if I was seeing the same things she was. It was fun, though, to take in where you live through the eyes of someone who’d never seen it.

  And when we drove through the pillars into Sea Cliff, I saw her taking it all in even more. She actually grabbed my arm, like this was a new thing happening to both of us.

  “Who
a,” she said. “This is really nice. I mean really.”

  Meredith had met Lila only one other time, when Lila came to my ninth-grade graduation. Just one time, even after all the years we’d known each other. Lila didn’t usually fly out to see me; I flew to her. And that day on the lawn of Academy of Arts and Sciences, Lila was in full Lila mode, dressed entirely in ivory with only a green silk scarf as color. Big sunglasses. Vibrations coming off her, you know, of importance. Very un-Seattle. It was like bringing the Hope Diamond into Zales. Even if she just sat there, she’d be utterly large and shining.

  Ellen and Paul, Meredith’s parents, were there too, of course. They all shook hands and stood in an awkward circle. Edwina and Ellen gave us these bouquets wrapped in cellophane that they’d gotten at the grocery store, but Lila set a lei of orchids around my neck. There was talk about how proud everyone was, but then the conversation stalled, and Lila took my elbow and said we had to be going.

  Now, Meredith was coming to our house, and I hoped we wouldn’t have a repeat of the uncomfortable Nicco and Lila meeting. It was a Saturday morning, and no one was working at the construction site next door. It was quiet over there—no hammers pounding, no saws screaming and then going silent. It wasn’t quiet at our place, though. Max had heard the unfamiliar car, and when we opened the front gate, he went crazy. “Yikes,” Meredith said.

  “It’s okay. He always does that. Don’t be afraid. He also barks at the neighbor’s recycling bins.” I was rolling Meredith’s little roller bag up the walk, and she had her other bag slung over her shoulder. “Max!” I called. “It’s me!”

  “I’m nervous,” Meredith said.

  “He’s really a sweetheart.”

  “No, I mean your mom. I don’t usually hang out with movie stars.”

  She never did that kind of thing at home. She never got all weird about Lila. At Academy, I was myself, and none of my friends ever even mentioned her. At least, not the famous parts. She was my annoying mother who called when it was inconvenient and kept me on the phone when I wanted to get off. I thought they’d forgotten about the rest, but maybe they never really had. Of course, this was different, Meredith coming to stay in our house. Lila would be real to her, not a story I told.