Girl, Unframed

by Deb Caletti

  I crept down the stairs. I listened. They were in the kitchen. Lila’s voice was full of emotion, but she sounded more scared than angry. She sounded like she was being careful. Maybe that’s what you did after someone put a hand on you—spoke carefully, quietly. Or maybe she was just too afraid to be angry.

  I listened only long enough to understand what had happened: The phone call she had gotten was from the FBI. The FBI! Well, you know this already. They called to ask questions about Jake and what she’d seen at the house, what she knew. They wanted her to come in to speak in person. They asked her so many questions that everyone at the read had to wait. Evan Dunne and the rest were pissed when she said she had to go.

  “You don’t answer anything!” Jake said. “You don’t talk to anyone without a lawyer!”

  He was mad, but she started to cry. “This could ruin everything,” she said. And he kept saying, “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay, baby. It’s going to be okay.”

  No, it wouldn’t be. You had the foreshocks and then the shock itself. In 1906 the earthquake took just one minute to change the lives of thousands, and then the tsunami buried the Presidio, and then the fire burned for three days. And our great-grandmother, you know, she had to run.

  I stepped quietly through the White Room, where the blank space of Crying Girl still called to me from that large, bare wall. I opened the doors to the beautiful patio overlooking the ocean. In the darkness, I took the 104 steps down to China Beach.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Exhibit 62: Recorded statement of Sydney E. Reilly, 4 of 5

  It was dark down on the beach, but it was a warm night. I could see our house on the cliff above me, but also the unfinished one next door. The frame was nearing completion, but there were no walls to contain you and no roof to shelter you. I walked until I was right in front of it, sat on a rock, and listened to the crash of the waves and then the crickle-crickle as the water retreated over the sand.

  I set my drawing pad down beside me and called Nicco.

  “You’re home! A day early.”

  “Yeah, unexpectedly.”

  “Is everything okay? You sound awful.”

  “I don’t know. Things are strange.”

  “What’s going on?”

  I still hadn’t told him about any of this. Not the art, not Jake, not the man watching us, who I now knew was an agent with the FBI. “Jake. He’s in some kind of trouble.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Large shit.” Somehow this reference to our old joke didn’t really work. It wasn’t the time to joke.

  “God, Syd.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just watched the moonlight decorating the waves with diamonds.

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Has to do with art.”

  “Art.”

  “He buys and sells it, but you know, I’m not sure if it’s all… on the up-and-up.” To put it mildly. I had no idea who he stole it from, or how.

  “Oh, wow.”

  “It’s bad.”

  “Oh, wow,” Nicco said again. “I hope you and your mom are okay.”

  I liked how he said this. “You and your mom.” It shoved away all of her fame and the money and the important people and this big crime and all the rest of it, and made it about what it was about, just me and my mother. Me and my mother, and what could happen to us.

  “He’s not a good guy.”

  “Do you need me to come and get you? You could stay here.”

  “Nah. I’m all right. Just sit here and keep me company.”

  “I can do that. Are we still on for day after tomorrow?”

  “God, yes. I definitely want that.”

  “I wish I didn’t have to work, or it’d be sooner. If you need me to, I can take time off.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “And shit, my roommate’s having a party. If we want to be alone, we’ll have to go somewhere else.”

  “We’ll go somewhere else.” I wanted to be alone, all right.

  “Where are you? It sounds like a hair blower.”

  I laughed. “It’s the ocean. I’m down at the beach. Hair-blower ocean,” I said. Something for his notebook.

  “You’ll be careful? The tide comes in quick. There’s not much beach down there.”

  I knew nothing about tides. The way they could come in and swallow you up, the way that they always went out again.

  We hung up. I hadn’t even noticed, but he was right. Before I called, the water was out past a nearby group of rocks, and now the rocks were covered.

  It was late, but I wasn’t going to go in yet. I could see that the lights were still on in our house. I’d go back when everyone was asleep.

  I picked up my drawing pad. It was funny, because the last thing I’d drawn was a still life of some flowers in a vase that we’d done in class. But life wasn’t still, and this seemed like so long ago, and those flowers had nothing to do with me.

  In those paintings, the women were bodies. The artists had held the brush and decided what to leave out. I’d never leave out the things that made a person human. I turned to a blank page.

  And I sketched Nicco then. The way he’d looked when he was reclining on the beach that night in the fog.

  I got lost in what I was doing. I wanted to capture him, the real him. The eyes were the hardest part.

  And then I heard a shout.

  “Sydney! For God’s sake, what are you doing? Get the hell over here!”

  Jake. I looked up, and I saw that he was right; there was reason for alarm. The tide had crept in. The sea had covered the space between the unbuilt house and ours. The water had reached our stairs.

  “Jesus!” he cried.

  “I’m coming!” I yelled. But I had to wade. The water was up to my ankles. When a wave came in, it splashed up my thighs, wetting the hem of my shorts. I could feel the pull of it, drawing me out.

  Jake reached his arm toward me, and I took his hand. The force of the next wave was stronger than I imagined. His hand gripped mine hard. Even with the way I felt about him right then, I was thankful for it.

  “Your mother was worried.”

  I doubted that. I doubted she’d even noticed I was gone. He’d noticed. His eyes were the ones that were always on me, even more than hers.

  He yanked me up to the stair where he stood. The water still smashed at our feet.

  “Do you know how dangerous it is out here? You would’ve had to climb back up.” He pointed to the cliff. “Could you have climbed that?”

  “I lost track of time.”

  He caught sight of my drawing pad. “What is that?”

  I tried to flip it closed. “A study.”

  “A study, huh?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I saw that. You think I don’t know who that was?” He exhaled disgust. “Nice, you know. Real nice. The guy’s dick hanging out.”

  What did it matter to him? Didn’t he have bigger problems than me drawing a penis, for God’s sake? “The women are naked in all those paintings.”

  “That’s art. This isn’t. You’re lucky I don’t burn that. You think that’s what men want? Someone easy? Someone handing it over? Wrong. Men want a lady. You gotta respect yourself. A beautiful girl like you, Jesus Christ.”

  “I do respect myself.”

  “The way you’re acting with that kid, it sure doesn’t seem like it.”

  “What about him? Is he respecting himself?” Whoever said that about guys and sex? No one. Never.

  “His job is to respect you.” Jake was pissed. “If I see that kid again, he better watch his ass, that’s all I can say. He better keep both eyes open while he sleeps.”

  We were at the top of the stairs by then. Jake shook his head and exhaled, stormed into the house, mad. He slammed the glass doors of the White Room, making them shudder.

  I opened the doors again slowly, carefully. I crept upstairs without being seen or heard. I did that because he scared me. But I was mad, too. Rea
lly mad. I mean, first off, he was a bully-asshole-criminal. And second, Jake and me and sex—he didn’t care about me taking a big step, or getting STDs, or using contraception. He was guarding my virtue, like my body and my spirit would spoil if I were touched. Like my body was his. To leer at and control. Well, fuck you, because it was mine, and I wanted it—the all-and-everything that any guy could have.

  I was angry, you know. The kind of angry that makes you feel dangerous. Under my feet, the earth shook. I imagined how it would look when everything began to fall.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Exhibit 63: Sworn testimony of Detective Reese Craig, 2 of 2

  Exhibit 64: Surveillance notes of Detective Reese Craig

  The next morning, I called the car service. I wanted to go to City Lights again. I wanted to be with all those spines and words, where the signs in the windows read STAND UP TO POWER and THERE IS NO PROGRESS WITHOUT STRUGGLE and COURAGE IS THE TRIUMPH OVER FEAR.

  I didn’t want to be in that house, either, so I waited outside. And then I saw Shane.

  For once, he didn’t see me. He was actually inside the structure of that house, on the second floor. His back was to me. He held a large drill. He raised it above his shoulder, as if sinking that drill bit into wood were no effort at all. I watched his big shoulders, his powerful, strong forearms. I thought of all the times he’d looked at me and called to me.

  I felt compelled. My heart started to pound like a fist on a door again. IT pushed me forward before I could even think it through.

  I hurried over, because need makes everything suddenly urgent. Two of the other guys were out by the utility box near the street. If they saw me, I didn’t notice, and didn’t care. I stepped around rolls of tar paper and stacks of who-knows-what. I made my way across what would be the living room, and then I went up the stairs to where Shane was.

  He didn’t hear me. His back was to me. He was wearing goggles, and the strap was buried in his curly hair.

  But then he must have sensed my presence, because he lowered the drill and turned around. When he saw me, he tossed his goggles off.

  “Shit, you scared me. Hey, you.”

  I looked at him. As I said, he was handsome, really.

  “What are you doing here?” He lowered his voice, raised one eyebrow like we were playing that game again.

  I lifted my hand to his face. My hand was on his skin, and it was warm and I could feel his strong cheekbone under my fingers.

  And then I gripped his jaw and turned it so that he looked at me. I mean really looked at me. It was so clear to me then: IT was not only about sex or fun or exciting stuff that might change me. What I wanted was larger than any of that. I wanted to be as full in the world as anyone else.

  “Stop harassing me,” I said.

  He looked shocked. He grinned. He grinned like I was being cute, like I was being amusing, a playful little kitten.

  “Stop. Harassing. Me.”

  “Hey. Hey,” he said. “Let go.”

  I did. But not until he saw me first.

  “If you don’t stop this, I’m going to call the head of…” Shit. I didn’t know. “Whatever company you work for. I’m going to call and file a complaint.”

  “I thought you liked it.”

  Did I? Had I? Was there part of it I liked? I didn’t even know. Maybe I did the first time. But then I didn’t. It made me nervous. Scared, even. But I was supposed to think it was a compliment. And if it didn’t feel like one, what could I do about it anyway? Look at him, I mean. Look at his arms, his age, his shoulders. It seemed better to like it. Or at least, to not make a big deal out of it. To put up with it. To take it.

  “I’m sixteen, you know. I’m just trying to have a good summer,” I said.

  “I thought you were in college.”

  “If I were in college, I still wouldn’t like it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m a real person.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry.”

  “Why is that so easy to forget?”

  “Jesus, okay.”

  I wanted to say more. I had lots more to say. But I could hear the edge in his voice. He was getting pissed. We were standing on the second floor of that house in a place where there were no walls. How pissed could he get? Could he shut me up with a shove? He was the one who got to decide how this went.

  I turned around. I felt his eyes on my back. I felt them boring into me, same as that drill. I didn’t run or even hurry. It was so hard not to. But I didn’t want him to know I was scared.

  There still wasn’t a handrail, and my legs shook as I went down the stairs. My little flowered purse bumped against my hip.

  I stepped out of that frame, the bare wood bones of a future home. My heart was beating hard. My face was flushed. God, I was sweating like mad. I didn’t feel victorious. The bigger victory would have been to not have to say it in the first place. But I did something necessary, you know. I made sure he knew it was my world too.

  The car service was waiting for me out in front of 716 Sea Cliff Drive. I got in the back.

  “Where to?” the driver asked.

  “City Lights.”

  He met my eyes in the rearview mirror. “No prob.”

  My flowered purse sat in my lap. My hands were shaking so bad that I could barely get the seat belt into the buckle. Finally, I fastened it. I was in the back seat. I wasn’t behind the wheel. And I decided right there that the first thing I needed to do was learn how to drive.

  * * *

  At City Lights, I saw Agatha again. After Nicco, I realized that this probably wasn’t some fateful coincidence. Likely, I’d just happened upon a person’s routine.

  She had her sun hat tied around her neck, and it hung against her back. She wore tan walking shorts with lots of pockets, and an old T-shirt with a large orange sun that said BIG SUR FOLK FESTIVAL. I pictured her with her narrow, bare butt and droopy boobs and her skin like fallen bread dough. I wondered what had led her to walking that beach naked. Or more important, not caring when she did. If I ever heard her stories, I was sure she’d have things to teach me.

  She was in the travel section, like the time before. She had another book about Oregon under one arm, and she perused the shelves with her head at an angle in order to read the titles better. I wondered why she was so interested in Oregon—if it was a part of her past or of her future.

  I snooped on Agatha, and then I tried to find the second Elena Ferrante in the series, but they didn’t have it. The bookseller offered to order it. It would come in about a week.

  “That’s okay, I’ll just look around,” I said.

  We are animals, and animals have instincts, I know. But what if instincts were just the ghosts of our own family history talking? Telling us their stories, whispering all the things they learned about vulnerability and danger, of bad stuff about to happen. Warning us, if it’s quiet enough to hear them. In that bookstore, it was quiet enough. My instinct told me a week was too late. In a week, I wouldn’t be there. A week might as well have been years.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Exhibit 65: Receipt, FTD

  Exhibit 66: Sworn statement of Riley Latona, FTD Delivery

  Exhibit 67: U.S. Department of Justice/Federal Bureau of Investigation subpoena issued to Giacomo (Jake) A. Antonetti

  The next morning, Lila was awake early again, but not for work. She was making little repairs to me. She was in the kitchen wearing her ivory satin robe and she was baking. Baking! Muffins out of a box, where all you do is add the egg and water, but still. Maybe she’d talked to Edwina, because they were my favorite kind, the poppy seed ones that Edwina made for me on Sunday mornings when I stayed with her for the weekend.

  “Are you free for a few minutes today?” Lila asked, as if I were a titan of business with a packed calendar.

  “Well, there was that meeting with the foreign heads of state,” I said. “But I could cancel. Yeah. I’m free until tonight.”

  “What’s tonight?�
��

  I rolled my eyes because she should have known this meant I was hanging out with Nicco.

  “Let’s go to lunch,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “Sutro’s at the Cliff House.”

  I didn’t know if this was some weird Lila move, because that’s where Nicco worked. “Why Sutro’s? You getting the dirt on Nicco?”

  But she just looked baffled. And then, “Oh. Oh, right, I forgot.” I’d told her a hundred times that Nicco worked there. “It’s just close and you can’t beat the view.”

  I shrugged. We wouldn’t see him anyway, since he was working at his moms’ store that afternoon. He’d laugh about us going.

  * * *

  The host sat us by the large glass windows. People stared at Lila, who was dressed all in tangerine. The restaurant was decorated in shades of white and gray, so she was a bright solar flare.

  It was strange to see that place from the inside out, rather than from the outside in. From every angle, you could see the Pacific Ocean or Seal Rocks or the Sutro Bath ruins, looking different from that perspective. The waiter wore Nicco’s familiar black pants and white shirt, and I pictured Nicco doing the same things he did, offering his service, describing the specials, gathering the wineglasses the moment he was sure we wouldn’t need them.

  We ordered crab sandwiches. I looked out at the ocean. In 1887 a schooner loaded with dynamite crashed into those very rocks and exploded, destroying a wing of the old Cliff House, right where we sat. Two more fires blazed here after that. History was everywhere, and you were looking right at it, even if you didn’t realize it.

  “Syd-Syd,” Lila said. “I want to apologize. This whole summer…” She waved her hand around, indicating chaos. I didn’t say anything, because yeah. Yeah, it had been. “And last weekend… it didn’t even occur to me, you know, about Peyton Place. I didn’t even make the connection, you and your budding romance with the boy.”