When we get to the on-ramp of the highway, one sign says EAST, and the other says WEST. The bus swings to the left instead of to the right, and I’m going down a road I’ve never been on before.
I get to Buffalo, wait, and change buses. It isn’t until I cross the first state line that I get it. It hits me so hard that I actually start to cry. I get out my upward mobility notebook and write it down. I get it, Grimshaw, I write. You had to go. I get it now.
eleven
IT’S A GOOD THING I HAD no idea how big the country was going to be. By Chicago, the bus driver’s told us not to smoke, drink, or cross the yellow line enough times in Spanish that I have the announcement memorized. By St. Louis, she forgets to say it in English a couple of times. In Tulsa, and somewhere in Arizona, I borrow phones and leave messages at home, but I don’t get anyone in person.
Four days later, LA is huge and hot and dirty. In front of the bus station, I show Grimshaw’s address to a cab driver, who asks me how much money I have. He takes all of it and brings me to a little white bungalow with an orange-tiled roof and closed green shutters and a chain-link fence drawn tight around a narrow collar of asphalt. The door is on the right-hand side of the house, with a stoop and a walkway that leads to the gate where I’m standing. The gold Corvette sits next to it in the driveway. It now has a California vanity plate that reads VIPER. I’m here. There’s a buzzer on the gate. I push the button and hear it ring inside. Nothing happens, so I ring again. After a minute, the door opens and my friend Melody Grimshaw comes out and stands, shielding her eyes against the strong sunlight. She’s in a white T-shirt that comes down almost to her knees. She closes the door behind her and drifts down the little concrete walkway and stops on the other side of the gate. She hasn’t put her makeup on yet, so there are those white eyelashes, which nobody has seen since sixth grade. She touches my hand on the metal post, like she’s making sure it’s real. I hold my hand up, and our fingers lace together. We stand there together on either side of the gate, not saying anything. When you haven’t seen someone in a long time that you used to see every day, it’s a lot like seeing the ghost of the person you used to know. You act like it’s nothing, like you see ghosts all the time, like all you see are ghosts. We stand there like that and watch a kid across the street bouncing a basketball off the side of his building. Chained to a stop sign there’s a bicycle with no tires or handlebars that looks like it’s been there for a while.
“It’s funny to see palm trees, isn’t it?” she says.
“It is. It must make you feel like you’re in a movie.”
“It kinda does.” We fill up the awkwardness with small talk. “How long did it take you to get here?” she asks.
“About four months.”
“Shut up.”
“I was in Missouri for three weeks. I thought I died and went to hell.”
“Missouri is nothing. You should see Nebraska.”
“Missouri is literally ten times the size of Nebraska.”
“No, it’s not!”
“In Texas, this guy fell asleep on me and the brim of his cowboy hat rubbed a hole in my neck. Look.”
“That’s the worst cover story for a hickey I ever heard. I bet Tim Marhaver gave it to you.”
I burst out laughing, and she looks pleased that she made me laugh first. At the sound of my laughter, the kid with the basketball turns around and tucks it under his arm and watches us.
* * *
The front door of the house opens again. Mike Lyle stands on top of the stoop. When she hears the door open, Grimshaw stiffens a little in front of me and doesn’t look up. But I’m taller than her, and I look over her head directly into those snake eyes. She puts her arms around my waist. I put my arms around Grimshaw and rest my chin on her head.
“Is it him?” she asks.
“Mm-hm.”
Mike folds his arms across his chest.
“Well, well, well,” he says. “Look what the cat dragged across. Somebody just couldn’t stay away, could they?” He’s still tinkering with his image. The black hair now has streaks of blond in it, and he’s grown a beard, very trim and shiny. A diamond stud in one ear flashes in the sun. He gazes down at me through slitted eyes, like he thinks I’m in his territory now and all the rules are different. A thin thread of fear slices lengthwise through my body. But I don’t know why I should be afraid: he’s still Mike Lyle, from Colchis, who doesn’t know how to swim.
Grimshaw steps aside and opens the gate for me. “Be prepared,” she says in a low voice.
“Hey, Grimshaw,” I whisper. “You don’t have an extra toothbrush, by any chance. I forgot mine.”
She stops. “For four days?” she demands.
We stop halfway up the walkway, and I tell her about the worst chicken salad sandwich in the world, which I bought out of a vending machine. “It was so bad, I can still taste it. I only had one bite.”
She tips back her head and laughs, this clear flutelike sound I’ve never heard from her before. While Mike watches, she kisses me. She looks like she did when I first met her. With her pale eyelashes, she looks innocent, more like a little girl than she did when she was one. She smiles, and we link arms and walk together toward Mike. She lifts her chin up in the way that you do when you’re letting somebody know that you don’t care what they think. So I do it, too.
* * *
She leads me into what must be the hottest kitchen in California, and that’s where we stay, chain-smoking Grimshaw’s menthols and going through three pots of lousy coffee. The house is tiny—just the kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom. Mike doesn’t want us to talk because he has a bunch of really important phone calls to make, which have to happen in the kitchen, so I lower my voice to a whisper and tell her about my trip, which makes it come out like an adventure, instead of what it really was, four days of bleakness and depression and dirty windows, and a little girl in Texas teaching me words in Spanish, and the guy in the advanced stages of alcoholism falling asleep on me with his cowboy hat rubbing against my neck all the way from Albuquerque to Phoenix. She listens for a while, then she wants to know how my classes are going.
“I had this really big book I read all the way across, Moby-Dick. People thought it was the Bible, and I got blessed a bunch of times in Spanish.”
I get out Moby-Dick, and she sees all the books in my backpack. “Tell me you applied to college,” she says.
“I didn’t have time!”
She shakes her head and sighs. “How’s—” And then she coughs. I know who she’s talking about. Junior Davis. A cough is code for someone whose name we aren’t supposed to say out loud. Mike is standing over us, with one foot up on a chair, frowning into his phone. I make her stand up, then I get her on the floor in a headlock, while she laughs, then I stand up and hold her arm up in victory.
“All-State.”
Her eyes open wide. “The championship?”
“Yup.” We sit back down. And then I crack a can of beer, lift it to my mouth, and chug it.
“No!” she says.
I nod my head. “Afraid so.”
She looks stricken. “But”—cough—“is the only person in the whole Valley who doesn’t drink!” she says.
I shrug. “He’s failing math. For the fourth time. And also—”
But before I get a chance to update her on Rack’s baby, Mike swears and brings his fist down on the table and makes all the coffee cups jump and the spoons rattle. A glass falls off the table. Something on his phone made him mad, but Grimshaw doesn’t ask what happened. This hard look of irritation shoots through her eyes. She’s not afraid of him, I can see that. In fact, she’s sick of him. I make the mistake of looking from her to Mike and then back to her right then, and he sees that I see it. I wonder if she even knows about Rack’s baby. An idea occurs to me. I wonder if she would come back with me.
“Also they broke up,” I finish.
She shrugs. “No surprises. Can’t you do something, though?” she asks. “You�
�re good at math.”
Leaning close together so we don’t bother Mike, we go through all the people we know in Colchis—who’s dating, who doesn’t come to school anymore, who the new cheerleaders are. When we get to Rack, Grimshaw doesn’t seem to know about the pregnancy, and I don’t tell her.
* * *
From the one side of the conversations on the phone, I have no idea what he does except pretend to be a big Hollywood producer. He shouts into the phone about “talent” and “product.” The one time the phone rings for him, though, it’s all “yes, sir,” and “no, sir,” and “I understand how you feel, sir.”
“So what’s the book about?” Grimshaw asks when Mike looks over at us.
“A whale.” We both explode laughing, put our foreheads on the table and our shoulders shake, just like the laughing attacks we’d have when she came to church with us.
When Mike goes to the bathroom, he leaves the door open and positions himself so that he can watch us in the mirror while he takes a piss. When he comes out, he tells Grimshaw to get ready for work. They have to go in early today, he says.
Grimshaw disagrees. “We have a whole hour before we have to go in. Anyway, it’s Monday. We can go in late if we want to.”
“I got things I gotta do,” he says.
“Well, fine, then. I need time to put my makeup on, though.”
“Do it at work,” he says, staring at me. “We gotta go.”
She opens her eyes wide at me. “Fine,” she says. She doubles over laughing again and has a hard time walking across the kitchen.
While she’s in the bedroom changing, Mike stays where he is, still on his phone, posted by the door. He doesn’t take his eyes off me.
He’s trying to intimidate me, but I’m not afraid of him. I understand why I came out here. His girlfriend doesn’t need him anymore, and he knows it, and now I know it, too. I’m not sure she knows it yet. I pick up Moby-Dick. “Can I use your washing machine?” I call to Grimshaw.
“It’s in the bathroom,” she calls back. “But the big dryer doesn’t blow very hot.” For some reason, we both crack up at the same time. I can hear her in the bedroom. She’s still laughing when she comes out and picks up my upward mobility notebook. She leafs through it, remarks on how much I’ve written in it, then on the first blank page, she draws me a map of how to get to the Over Easy and then she draws a diagram of the place where she will be. Mike is the manager there. She says it’s a long walk, but close enough for me to meet her there tonight, when she takes her break.
“Stick to the main streets,” she says. “Follow the map.”
After they leave, I sit there for a while, looking at Grimshaw’s handwriting, which hasn’t changed since sixth grade. At this point, my only plan is to ask my mother for a plane ticket home, so now I’ll ask her for two plane tickets. But then what would Grimshaw do back in Colchis, where would she go? Back to the junkyard? Help out with the bridal shop? Anywhere but here, I suppose, being ruled by Mike Lyle. I’ll just give her the option, that’s all. I noticed the way that little fork of irritation appears next to her eyebrow whenever he says anything. A best friend picks up on things like that. When I get there tonight, we’ll talk it over. Then I remember my next step in life: the washing machine, which is in the bathroom. My clothes are so glad to be off my body after four days in a row that they dive into the washer.
In the mirror, I inspect my hair, which has never gone four days without being washed. It’s so greasy it’s not even blonde anymore. Usually, I hate mirrors. Grimshaw is my idea of beauty, and I don’t look one little thing like Grimshaw. I look into my own blue eyes and smile at my friend in the mirror. I remember the guy on the bus in Albuquerque who told me that my eyes reminded him of the sky. “Very far away.” If we have this much courage to do things like this, imagine how much more we’ll have for things that actually make sense. It occurs to me what a brave thing it was I just did, just as brave as what she did.
After I get out of the shower, I realize I didn’t plan things out very well. I don’t have anything to wear while I wait for my clothes.
I walk over to a clothes rack in the corner. Grimshaw seems to have invested heavily in underwear, which are arranged on a drying rack in the corner of the bathroom. They have straps and rivets, with fringe and lace and sequins, the kind that look like they’d be itchy and uncomfortable to wear. I pick up a pair of black lace stockings, trying to figure out how they work. I get my legs in, and then I discover there are arms, too, and pull on a body stocking. It’s so tight on me it’s hard to breathe in it, but that might be because my heart has started to beat really fast. I stare at myself in it in the mirror. It’s crotchless. I see a girl who looks a little scared, who just figured out that she’s a long way from home. I remember what Mike said to me the first night I met him, that underneath our clothes, we’re no different than animals. The body stocking is itchy on my skin and kind of greasy-feeling, like I need to take another shower. I peel it off and fling it away from me. I look over the things on the drying rack—for someone who’s so smart, I sure am a slow learner. I had to come a long way to find out what everybody but me knew from the beginning, even Mike—that if Grimshaw wanted to be a stripper, she was always going to be a stripper. All that drama, all that strategy about having a dream just led to this. This is the plan she always had, and now she’s living it, but it doesn’t seem glamorous. It seems depressing, like the body stocking now coiled in the corner like something that just crawled out of the drain.
The washing machine makes its loud buzz. I throw my clothes in the dryer, and I put on Grimshaw’s silky little bathrobe that I find on the back of the bathroom door and go back out into the kitchen. I am aware of the quiet, the cars passing by. Suddenly it feels really creepy and kind of exposed to be here all by myself in Mike’s house. The minute my clothes are dry, I’ll start walking to Grimshaw’s work. I wonder if I should just put my clothes on wet and go now. No, that’s stupid. I get out my upward mobility notebook and reread her directions to the Over Easy. I wish I’d asked to use her phone before she left. The last call I made was from Bakersfield. Then I open up Moby-Dick and as I look for my place, I become aware of the rest of the sounds of the neighborhood, that kid still bouncing a basketball the way he’s been doing all day, somebody’s small dog barking, car horns and diesel engines, music out open car windows, people talking nearby, maybe on television, and I start to relax and be a little curious about where I am. I start to wish that Grimshaw had her own place here where I could actually visit her instead of being watched and silenced by Mike.
A car door slams next to the house, and then there he is, coming in the screen door. He stops in the doorway and looks at me and all the noises of the neighborhood go away. Everything in my mind goes blank. I wait to see if Grimshaw is coming up behind him, but he just stands there, like he doesn’t know what to do next.
“Where’s Melody?” I ask, knowing the answer as soon as I hear myself ask the question.
He laughs. “The first time I met you, you were asking me that. ‘Where’s Melody?’” he mimics. “‘Where’s Melody?’” He kicks something across the kitchen floor. It’s the cup that fell when he pounded the table that nobody picked up. It gets to a point on the linoleum and then spins by itself.
“I needed to get some stuff,” he says when it stops.
“It’s okay,” I reply.
“I guess it’s okay,” he says. “It’s my house.” But he doesn’t move, he just stands there. I am barely breathing, just a thread of air coming in and out of my lungs. The moment extends, and still he doesn’t move.
I look down at the book in my lap. There are no words on the page anymore, not even when I put my finger underneath the line so I can focus. He walks across the kitchen, and I watch his feet go by. He goes into their bedroom, and I can hear him moving around, opening and shutting drawers, banging things. There’s no reason to be afraid of Mike Lyle, I tell myself, just because he’s in California, he’s the sam
e guy he’s ever been, just a loser in a shiny car. It occurs to me that I should go into the bathroom and just put my clothes on wet, and then leave. I don’t need to say another word to him. I close the book, but then he comes out of the bedroom, goes in the bathroom himself, and shuts the door. I listen to the sound of my clothes scraping around in the dryer. I wish I’d never washed them. It seems like the worst idea I ever had.
When the door opens again, he stands there without moving, but I don’t look up. “Hey,” he says softly. “You tried on her things.” He’s smiling.
“No.”
He holds out the body stocking. It lies across his hands like a long black rope. “You stretched it out,” he says. “These things aren’t cheap.” While I watch, he wraps it around each hand and pulls it tight so it looks like a cord, and his smile disappears. Then he laughs. “I’m just kiddin’ around, you know that. We’re old friends, you and me.” He walks over to me with the body stocking coiled around one hand. I tighten my grip on Moby-Dick. He drops it into my lap, kind of wrapping it on the book. He chuckles. “I’m just playing with you,” he says. “Just like you do when you’re home, you play with people. But you’re not home now.” He moves a strand of damp hair from front to back, and as he does so, drags a fingernail across the side of my neck. He stands very close, breathing down on me. He works his fingers into my hair on the back of my head. Everything goes white for a second, and I hear wind rushing in my ears.
“I like your hair long,” he whispers. “Rich girl.” His leg is against my arm. “Your long blonde hair. Rich girl,” he says again.
“I’m not rich.”
I move my arm. He steps even closer so that I am aware of his penis pushing out the front of his pants and I can feel the heat of it against the side of my arm. I move my arm away, but he steps in closer, and this time he starts rubbing against it. “You think you’re better than we are, don’t you?” He waits for me to answer.
The Spaces Between Us Page 15