The Girl On The Half Shell

by Susan Ward

  Silence. “Oh, shit.” More silence. “Chrissie, did you accept it?”

  “No. It’s a Domenico Montagnana.”

  Another pause. “Don’t accept it. I’ve already told Manny I won’t allow him to give it to you. Manny is in a rough place right now. He needs to learn new habits. The only way he will ever learn to deal with his issues is if the people around him don’t let him buy his way out of them.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know, Chrissie. Just don’t accept the cello.”

  “But…but, Daddy, why does he think he owes me an apology?”

  A heavy sigh. “He’s the reason I flew off at Christmas. The reason you were left alone. The reason I haven’t been around as much as I should for you lately.”

  “Oh.”

  “Hey, I’m glad you called,” Jack says. “I’m glad you felt you could discuss this with me. You don’t tell me enough about what’s going on with you and you can tell me anything.”

  I am plunged into that familiar anxiousness and whispering sadness. I can’t tell what my father knows, and if he knows everything, why won’t he just talk about it?

  “Listen, Chrissie. Another thing. I would prefer you stayed clear of Manny.”

  Now I’m cold and shaky. Jack being parental. “Why?”

  “Manny’s got issues. He’s complicated, and he’s not ready for even a friendship thing with you.”

  “I know about the drugs. About Rehab.”

  Another pause. “Baby girl, drugs are a problem, a symptom, they are never the issue. And he’s got big issues.”

  What could be bigger than drugs?

  “He seems very nice,” I say.

  More silence. It feels through the phone line almost like Jack is debating with himself how much to divulge.

  “I can’t tell you the details. And this is in confidence, Chrissie. You tell no one. Somehow we’ve managed to keep it from the press. He wasn’t in Rehab. He went from detox to a lock-down mental hospital. He’s not ready to be in New York. He’s not ready for the circus. Manny tried to kill himself last year.”

  Oh god…Alan’s voice whispers through my head: I lined it up and I snorted it all and I said, fuck it, maybe I’ll just stop thinking today. Oh god, I didn’t even realize what it was he told me.

  I manage to hold it together through the remainder of the call, but long before I drop the receiver back into the rest I am shaking, and everything is running wildly loose through my body.

  Oh god, what is wrong with me? Is that what I feel in him? Why I am drawn to him? I’ve touched a dead person before. My brother. It changes you. Death lingers in your flesh. It is not something you can shake off; it is metaphysically altering. Am I even more fucked up than in the ways I already know?

  Oh shit, oh shit, of shit! There is more going on inside of me than ever before at any time, like a fast free-fall instead of a wave, fragments in my brain running and colliding, emotions accelerating. What is that pounding on the edge of my consciousness, fighting to get in? I am feeling it again, like I did at CBGBs seeing Vince Carroll, this horrible picture fuzzy and fighting to become clear.

  I want it to stop. Oh, please make it stop. I realize I am sitting on my knees on the cold marble bathroom floor, in front of the vanity cabinet, unaware of how I got here. I jerk the heavy black lacquer box out and dump the contents on the floor: pills, so many pills, weed, pipes, coke vials, balloons, a tie off, needles…

  I pick up the needles in my shaking hands, the world falls away beneath me and I sink to the floor. Oh god, please no! And the messy inside of me is no longer mess. It is dark and ugly, in focus and real.

  Chapter Ten

  My name is being called and it sounds far away, as if in a tunnel. I stay motionless, curled on the bathroom floor.

  Then the cold and lifeless air around me is supercharged with the feel of Alan’s presence.

  He drops to his knees beside me. “Fuck, Chrissie! What did you do?” I feel limp like a rag doll, as he pulls me from the ground and drags me into his lap. “What did you do, Chrissie? Baby, what did you take?”

  He is rummaging through the mess of his stash box splashed across the floor. He slaps my face. “Baby, you’ve got to tell me what you took.” He slaps me more. I can’t feel his touch, I can’t feel my lips, and I can’t find the words in my head.

  Panicked and terrified, Alan starts to drag me across the floor. “Oh fuck! Damn it, Chrissie. What did you take?” He is pushing me over the toilet and his fingers are pushing in on my mouth.

  Part of my brain focuses. No, no, no. This is wrong. I don’t need to throw up. I plant my hands on the porcelain and struggle to break free. “I don’t do drugs. I didn’t take anything,” I say, my voice breathy and toneless.

  Alan releases me and sinks on the floor. He is shaking. “What the hell is wrong with you? I thought you OD’d. Jesus Christ, I thought you’d OD’d.”

  His breath is rapid, hard and ragged, as if he’s just run himself to exhaustion. When I finally look at him, he is sitting elbows on knees, face in hands.

  His eyes, burning and angry, lift to fix on me. “What the fuck is that doing scattered all over the floor? What game are you playing here? Are you fucking out of your mind, pulling a stunt like that?”

  I curl into a ball and stare. Alan starts picking up the mess from the floor, tossing it back into the lacquer box before slamming the lid shut and putting it back beneath the vanity.

  He stands above me, rigid and enraged. “Goddammit, speak to me. Is this some fucked up little girl tantrum because I had to leave today? I don’t do bullshit, Chrissie, and I don’t play little girl games.”

  When I don’t answer, he reaches out and grabs me from the floor. He is hauling me from the bathroom, his fingers tightening and tightening with each step. They press too hard into my side and I wince.

  He jerks up my shirt and the color drains from his face. “Oh fuck, Chrissie. Why did you do that today? Baby, just tell me. I don’t know how to help you.”

  I curl on my unburned side and wrap myself around his pillow. I start to sob, quietly at first, and then harder and harder because the numbness is fading and the distraught look on Alan’s face made it all come tumbling back.

  The things I now know for certain to be real. The things I remember. The things I want to forget. The things about Alan that terrify me. The things about myself that I hate. My thoughts are echoing and bouncing inside my head, and he wants me to tell him how to help me. He can’t help himself. We are two fucked up people. Jack had it half right. Neither of us are circus ready.

  I feel his fingers in my hair. “Hush, baby,” he breathes, and gently he pulls my paralyzed body into his arms, burying his lips into my hair. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  His voice is so achingly anguished. I force myself to shake my head no. He exhales what sounds like a sigh of relief that I’m responsive and continues to kiss gently all through my hair.

  “Did something happen to you, Chrissie? Did someone hurt you?”

  I shake my head. He exhales again.

  “Are you upset that I left?” He runs a shaking hand through his hair. “I should have called. I would have called. I didn’t have a chance to.”

  I shake my head. His hands, soothing and tender, move to my arms, gently rubbing up and down. “Shit, you’re freezing cold. How long have you been laying there?”

  I shrug. He scoops me up and carries me back into the bathroom. He is worried and almost despondent. “I don’t know what I did. You have to promise not to do this again. Just get angry. Just yell. Why can’t you talk instead of doing this?”

  I watch him from my perch on the toilet while he fills the tub. After shutting off the knobs, he comes back, eases off my shirt, examines the infinity burn on my lower left abdomen, and then transports me into the warm water of the tub.

  Alan collapses into a sitting position beside the tub, long limbs exhausted, and I curl in a ball in the center of the tub hugging my kn
ees silently.

  We sit together like this, neither of us moving or talking for ages.

  “Does the water make it hurt?” he asks after a long while.

  I turn very slowly until my cheek is against my knees so I can face him. “A little. Not bad. I like the pain.”

  His eyes flash. “Well then you are one fucked up little girl, because I can’t even stand the sight of you in pain.”

  I don’t know why that does it, but it makes me cry, a more normal and emotional cry.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put you through that.” I use the towel on the ledge to wipe my nose.

  “I’ve never had anyone scare me more in my life,” he whispers, eyes widening, the fearful expression returning.

  “It’s no big deal. It’s just what I do when everything gets too close and too real.”

  “I understand the too close and too real.” His eyes close again and I watch myriad emotions cross his face. “But please, for me, don’t do that again. I’ve seen a lot of shit, but that was the fucking worst. You looked dead. Why did you do it? Goddammit, talk to me!”

  I don’t answer him.

  He opens his eyes and looks at me. “OK. But soon, baby. Please make it soon.”

  He lifts me from the tub and sets me onto the waiting towel. He pats me dry, sets me on the bed and goes to my duffel for fresh clothes. He covers me in a long sleeve t-shirt, pulls on my panties and then a pair of sweatpants.

  “Do you want to go to sleep?” he asks.

  I shake my head no and then notice the exhausted lines on his face. He’s been at it since 7 a.m., he’s still dressed in the types of clothes he wears for interviews, it is 4 a.m., and he came back to the apartment having to deal with me. I feel my heart clench anew, but for kinder reasons.

  Fucked up he is, but Alan is a good guy, more than he believes.

  “Are you hungry?”

  I shake my head no.

  “Have you eaten today?”

  “No. Too many people in the apartment and a hideous girl in the kitchen.”

  That makes Alan laugh in a tired way. “Hideous girl would be Jeanette. My secretary.”

  I struggle to make a comical face. “See, you do know what someone does here, who works for you.”

  He pulls the blanket from the foot of the bed and wraps me in it. I’m transported down the hall to the kitchen, where he sets me on the butcher block island before going to rummage in the refrigerator.

  He starts pulling out cartons and setting them on the counter. “Kitchen finally stocked. An entire buffet of readymade here. What do you like? Does it matter? I just need something to kill the pain.”

  I shrug and watch. I haven’t the energy for behaving as if I’m OK. Not just yet, but I’m nearer.

  He dumps the cartons and a fork on the counter, settles in a bar high chair, and then scoots me around until I’m facing him, my legs dangling at his side.

  He fills a fork and holds it up for me. “I’m not sure what this is. Eat.”

  I take a bite. A reluctant laugh whispers out of me. “It’s potato salad.”

  He takes a bite. “Not bad. Let’s see what we have here.”

  Fork to my lips. Another bite. “Macaroni salad.”

  He takes a bite and sets it aside. “This I know. Meatloaf. Do you want me to heat it? I like it cold.”

  “Then I’ll eat it cold.”

  We pick at the meatloaf until we’ve both had our fill. At some point between forks full, he poured himself a very tall glass of whiskey. A part of me really wishes he wouldn’t, and a part of me taunts Who are you to be critical of his weaknesses? We are both messed up. Equal. The same.

  As he cleans up the mess, he asks, “Are you tired? Are you ready for bed yet?”

  I stare at my toes. “No, I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want to go back to the bedroom. I was trapped in there all day.”

  Alan laughs, tired. “You didn’t have to stay in the bedroom. I told you to do what you want to do here.”

  I shrug. “That’s what I wanted to do.” I stare out the wall of glass. “Can we sit out on the patio for a while? It’s nearly dawn. I want to watch the sunrise.”

  He settles us on a double chaise lounge and it is not long after we’ve curled into each other that Alan is asleep. As I tighten my arms around him, strangely finding comfort in holding him, the taut bands of emotion inside me finally finish unraveling. And in this moment—this moment of quiet with Alan—I am completely overcome by my feelings for him. I don’t know if he loves me. I don’t even know if I love him. But for the first time, I am offered a glimmer of understanding of what it should feel like to love.

  The sunrise comes and spreads across the sky. Just having Alan near has made me calm faster inside than ever before. Last night in the bathroom was the worst of the worse, lockboxes fully opened, fragments of memories joining into clarity. I expected the horror of finally understanding all the tormenting, unrelenting images to drag me down for weeks, but I am calm today, strangely calm, more than it is logical for me to be.

  It is well into morning when I hear sounds from the apartment, the terrace door open and then clicking heels on tile. I lift my cheek from Alan’s head, and open my eyes to find Jeanette hovering in front of me, setting a breakfast tray on the foot of the chaise. One plate. One setting. One cup of coffee. Message received, as if I couldn’t read the look she’s giving: Jeanette hates me.

  “He needs to wake,” she says, imperatively. “He needs to eat, shower, dress and leave here by ten. Do you think yourself capable of communicating that to him?”

  “Yes, I think I can manage that.”

  She doesn’t offer me breakfast. I watch her leave and I don’t give her the satisfaction of seeing me wake him. The perfect lines of Alan’s face look so peaceful when he sleeps, his breathing is so shallow as if he still needs sleep, and I hate the thought of waking him.

  I touch my lips to his forehead. “Alan, you need to wake up.”

  He straightens up, from dead asleep to wide awake in a blink, those penetrating black eyes fixed on me. “Are you OK?”

  I nod. “It’s just your breakfast is here and I have a message to communicate, and I wish to communicate before I forget it and make a mistake: You need to eat, shower, dress and leave here by ten.”

  Alan laughs, stabbing his omelet with a fork. “Ah, you don’t like Jeanette. She’s supposed to be a slave driver, Chrissie. She keeps me organized and on track with where I need to be and what I need to do. She is very good at it.”

  I take a sip of his coffee. She is also very beautiful. I smile. “I’m sure she is.”

  We eat, taking alternating bites, until his plate is completely clean.

  “Are you really OK, Chrissie? You wouldn’t lie to me would you?”

  “Yes, I’m fine today.”

  I change the subject. “How did you guys come up with the name Blackpoll?”

  Alan laughs, a lazy, sort of quiet laugh. “I can tell by how you say that, that you are one of the three Americans under thirty who know what a Blackpoll is.”

  I make a face at him.

  “Len has a thing about birds,” he explains, smiling. “Blackpoll is what you get when you don’t have a name for a band and Len answers the phone drunk, holding an Audubon book. There is symmetry to it, so I kept it.”

  “A small songbird surrounded by needles and cones?”

  Alan laughs. “I didn’t say good symmetry.”

  I hug my legs with my arms, pressing my cheek against knees, following him with my eyes as he returns to the kitchen for more coffee.

  When he settles beside me, I decide to ask the question I’ve turned in my head since we settled on the terrace last night.

  “Why do you keep the box in the bathroom?”

  “I told you, I don’t believe in that total sobriety bullshit. It’s no big deal, Chrissie.”

  “But the smack, Alan. Why keep the heroin if it’s a good thing you’ve kicked it?”

  He ha
nds me the cup of coffee. “Tossing it won’t change a thing if I decide to use again. It would be a meaningless gesture. Christ, I’m surrounded by it all the time. Tossing it would be as pointless as me taking your bracelet away.”

  I stare at my toes and I can feel him watching me.

  “Jeanette, bring me my book!” Alan bellows.

  Clicking heels on the tile close in on us. To Alan, she smiles and sets the book in front of him before taking away the breakfast tray. Alan rummages through the pages.

  “There isn’t anything here I can’t cancel if you want me to stay today.”

  He gives me a smile and what’s in my center is nearly a happy sensation.

  I shake my head. “No, you don’t have to stay. I’m all right. Really, I am.”

  “Only if you’re sure.”

  The tone of his voice tells me he means it, and it still amazes me that out of nowhere there is this guy who worries about me. “I’m sure.”

  His lips touch mine in such a sweetly gentle kiss that I instantly regret that I am sending him on his way. The tender kisses and touches are always the most potent, they light a fuse that makes me desperate for the rest of him.

  I don’t know if my impulses are normal, they are too new and fresh, but right now it feels as if it would be desperately right to make love with him.

  “My day isn’t long. I’ll be back late afternoon. Jeanette knows how to reach me.” His eyes fix on me sternly. “Call, Chrissie. If you need me, if you need anything, call me. You have to promise me or I won’t go. If something happens again, baby, you will call me first.”

  I nod and watch Alan disappear through the doors.

  After Alan leaves, I put on my one-piece and sit on the terrace, letting the sunshine soothe me and put me nearly to sleep.

  I hear sound from the apartment and I jump.

  “Shut the fuck up, Jeanette!” I hear from the great room. “Go back into your coffin or something. I’m not leaving and you are not keeping us away any longer.”

  The voice is loud, female, and edgy.

  “You really need to leave, Linda,” says Jeanette.

  Linda? The girl from the letters in the cabinet? I’m wide awake now, I haven’t a clue who Linda is, but by how she handles Jeanette I know she is someone to worry about.