What We Knew

by Barbara Stewart

  Trent quit laughing long enough to take her by the shoulders and help her to the bed. Chest heaving, he panted in Lisa’s face. “Hold your breath.”

  Lisa recoiled, swatting the air between them. “God, Trent, hold yours!”

  “I know! It’s wicked, right?” Rachel shrieked and then lost it all over again, flopping on the bed in a fit. Arms flapping, Trent descended, roaring like a fire-breathing dragon. I crawled beneath their feet, rescuing tipped beer bottles. Lisa slid off the mattress and slumped on the floor, her body jerking every few seconds like invisible fingers were poking her ribs. “Please make it stop,” she moaned, and then, “I think I peed my pants.” As she ran for the bathroom, Trent called, “Drink water! There’s a cup on the sink!”

  “Water won’t work,” Rachel said. “We need to scare them out of her.” Thinking, we sipped our warm beers and then froze at the sound of someone heavier than Lisa stumping up the stairs. Gabe in his work boots, reeking of pizza. He went straight to the fridge for a drink and then looked around the room, confused. “Where’s my girl?” he asked, flicking the bottle cap through the hole in the wall.

  “Bathroom,” I said. “Wicked hiccups.”

  Trent’s eyes sparkled fiendishly behind his lenses. “I’ve got it,” he whispered. “This is brilliant. Brilliant.” Gabe raised the bottle to his lips, but Trent snatched it away. “You. Under the bed,” Trent ordered. Gabe complied. Rachel grabbed her phone so she could record it. The three of us hushed and hissed as Lisa rasped violently up the stairs and down the hall, then keeled over on the bed, clutching her middle.

  “This—” Her body quaked, gripped by another spasm. “Is torture!”

  I was dangerously close to cracking up again. Rachel, too, behind her phone, pretending to use the camera as a mirror. Not Trent. There’s a reason why he’s always cast for the best roles. Ignoring Lisa’s hiccups, he chugged Gabe’s beer, then plunked on the floor and picked at the loose rubber on his sneaker before launching into his setup: “Hey, Leese, did you ever get your flip-flop back?”

  It was supposed to be funny, our attempt to cure Lisa. What was Trent doing? I silently shook my head at him. Don’t go there. Clasping the pendant at her neck, as if remembering the original she’d lost that night along with her flip-flop, Lisa chirped, “No. Why?”

  “It’s just … well,” Trent hesitated. “Maybe it’s not even yours.”

  Lisa eyed him suspiciously and then turned to me. Lips twitching, I fought the giddy burbling in my chest and shrugged, feigning cluelessness.

  “Okay, I’m just gonna say it,” he said. “Wednesday night, when I got home from work, there was this box. And there was a flip-flop inside.”

  Between hiccups, Lisa asked, “Where?”

  “That’s the freaky part,” Trent said. “It was on my bed. It’s under it now.”

  I didn’t know if it was the hiccups or Trent’s story, but Lisa looked stricken. That’s not true—I did know. I also knew it was time to pull the plug on Trent’s joke. But I didn’t. Instead I waited silently as my best friend dropped to her knees and pitched toward the black beneath the bed. It was priceless at first, the way Gabe’s hands shot out and Lisa, in a blurry frenzy, did one of those full-body screams, with arms and legs flying in all directions. But then something in me shifted—my view, I guess. Suddenly I was Lisa, shrinking from strange faces. Distorted. Ugly. It was one of those moments when you’re painfully aware of yourself: my laugh craggy and grating. My features alien, grotesque. The part of me that found Lisa’s shock hilarious seized up. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  Gabe mopped his face with his T-shirt and then wrapped his arms around Lisa’s waist, but Lisa just stood there stiffly, lips quivering.

  “This is gonna get a million hits!” Rachel screeched, fumbling with her phone.

  “Admit it,” Trent laughed. “You thought it was Banana Man.”

  I think everyone expected Lisa to start laughing, too, once the confusion wore off. I know none of us expected her to explode the way she did, slashing Trent’s face with her nails.

  “Mother—!” Trent snarled, pressing his palm to his cheek. “It was a joke, Lisa!”

  “A joke? You think this is a joke?” Lisa turned, raising the back of her shirt. The skin across her spine was striped purple and yellow. Gabe’s face buckled. He reached to touch the fading bruise, but Lisa yanked her shirt down. “Sweetie,” he cooed. “What the hell happened?”

  Trent didn’t care. Lisa had drawn blood. Pinpricks of red seeped from the claw marks. Rachel went for bandages and antiseptic. It wasn’t an overreaction. It was pretty nasty—the wound—but Trent was even nastier. Clenching his fists, he ordered Gabe to get his psycho bitch out of his house.

  I’d always considered Lisa lucky to have a guy like Gabe, but right then, not so much. Scaring the crap out of her was one thing—we’d all been in on that—but failing to defend her was just plain wrong. I took one look at his big dumb head—grudging and sad that Lisa had wrecked his night—and said, “Stay. I’ll take her home.”

  Passing Rachel on the stairs, she begged us not to leave, but we kept going until we were out the front door. The cool air tickled my neck and I shivered. I’d spent all summer trying to convince myself that Banana Man didn’t exist, but I had to ask: “Did he do that to you? The bruises on your back?”

  Lisa rushed into the murky darkness beyond the porch. She waited until we reached the next pool of light to speak. “Yes and no,” she said. “I went back to get my stuff and fell down the stupid stairs. I want this to be over, but he’s got my stuff. That dumb necklace. My flip-flop. It makes me sick, knowing he’s got them, not knowing what he’s doing with them. You know what I mean?”

  There was a desperate loneliness to her voice. I understood. Knowing that someone has something of yours, a piece of you you’ll never get back, it jigsaws your insides. But you have to let it go. Eventually.

  “He’s not real,” I said gently. “The guy who lives in the woods is a man, not a monster. He doesn’t know who we are, what we’re thinking. He’s not watching us. He doesn’t know where we live.” I reached for the button on the pole, but Lisa pulled me back.

  “You’ve felt it, too,” she whimpered. “You’ve said so.”

  “I know,” I said. “But listen. I think it’s something else. I think it’s everything you’ve been going through. The … you know.”

  Lisa marched across the street, ignoring the DON’T WALK light. Like an idiot, I tripped after her, racing an oncoming car.

  “You think I started this?” Lisa demanded.

  I took a deep breath, trying to calm my nerves. “No,” I said. “Of course not. Trent started it. Remember when we were little, though, how we used to get ourselves all worked up over the stupidest things? I know it sounds weird, but stress, fear, hallucinations—all that’s stuff’s catching.” I stuck my finger in her ear, trying to get a laugh, but Lisa brushed my hand away.

  “What about the eye?” she asked.

  Eyes.

  Picturing the two in my trunk, I blinked away the image and lied because it was the only explanation that made sense: “It was Trent,” I said. “And Gabe,” I added. “Trent put him up to it. Just like now. You think it was Gabe’s idea to hide under the bed?”

  Lisa stopped short and put her hands on her hips. “Gabe?” she asked. “Did he tell you that? Did he actually say he did it?”

  I knew what Lisa needed. Taking her hand, I nodded firmly, definitively, before we raced toward the next dash of light in the long ribbon of darkness.

  twenty

  Sometimes I feel like my life is held together with spit and wishes. It was supposed to be a perfect day: back-to-school shopping, frozen yogurt, then open mic night with Lisa. But everything fell apart, starting with our junky car. It just quit running, without warning, while we were waiting for the light to change. My mother turned the key a few times. A rapid clicking noise sounded. “That’s just great,” she groaned, hitting the steering
wheel. The car behind us honked. My mother stuck her arm out the window and waved angrily for the guy to go around.

  “Now what?” I said, gazing helplessly out the window. A few drivers slowed as they passed, checking out the losers stranded in the middle of the busy street. My mother unbuckled her seat belt. “We can’t stay here blocking traffic,” she said. She popped the door and got out. “I’ll push, you steer.”

  I climbed over the armrest and gripped the wheel at ten and two, just like she’d taught me the one time she took me driving. I knew it was useless, but I tried the key anyway, hoping the car had magically healed itself. Nothing. Dead.

  “Foot on the brake,” my mother directed through the window. A truck blew by, ruffling her hair. She flattened her body against the door and leaned in. “Now put the gearshift in neutral. The N,” she said, jabbing her finger at the center console. “D is for drive.”

  “I know,” I snapped, clutching the knob. “I’m not stupid.”

  My mother stalked to the trunk and then stalked back. Reaching in front of me, she cranked the stiff wheel, aiming the tires toward the lighted ENTER sign for a burger place. The rubber beneath me shuddered, skipping over the pavement. “Hold it tight,” she said, nodding for me to take over. Back to the trunk she went. In the side mirror, she waved, shouting, “Take your foot off the brake!”

  The car started rolling slowly. I could walk faster than we were moving, but I still felt out of control. In the rearview mirror, all I could see was the crooked part in my mom’s hair. Glancing to my right, I caught a minivan trying to nose ahead of me. Some soccer mom in a hurry for the drive-thru. Instinctively, I hit the brake. When I looked back, my mom was slapping the trunk in frustration. I cringed. We’d lost our momentum. She’d never be able to push the car up the slight rise ahead. Watching her there, hot and miserable, trying to summon the strength to get us going again, I was ready to call my dad when another head appeared next to hers. Clean-cut face, deep laugh lines, pilot sunglasses. My mother instantly perked, relieved by the small break the universe had granted. With the two of them pushing, the car glided forward, bumping up and over the asphalt lip. The stranger shouted something I couldn’t hear. I think he wanted me to steer, because my mom jogged to the window and took the wheel, aiming the car toward an empty spot beside the Dumpster.

  “Thank you so much. That was really nice of you,” my mother gushed as the stranger came around the car. “I really appreciate it.”

  “Not a problem,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Jim.”

  “Trish,” my mother said. “This is Tracy.”

  I waved from the driver’s seat. My mother opened the door for me to get out, then reached in and grabbed her phone. “Guess we’re gonna need a tow,” she said.

  Jim thunked the hood with his knuckle. “You want me to check it out?” he said. “I don’t mind.”

  “It’s the alternator,” my mother said confidently. Jim seemed impressed. “This car’s been nothing but trouble,” my mom griped. “Look, I’ve got the towing service under ‘favorites.’”

  Jim laughed. My mother pulled a wad of crumpled bills from her pocket. “Tracy, go get some drinks,” she said. I assumed she meant three—one for each of us—but standing before the fountain dispenser, I realized Jim hadn’t said what kind. Not that it mattered. Shouldering the glass door, I expected to find my mother sitting on the car bumper alone, but I was wrong.

  “Root beer. Lemon-lime. Orange,” I said, directing my nose at each of the cups in the carrier. Prying the root beer from the cardboard, Jim thanked me and then poked a straw through the plastic lid. The three of us stood there in the blistering parking lot, sipping and sweating, until Jim pointed his cup at my mother and cocked his head. “Trish, right?” My mother nodded. “You look really familiar,” he said. My mother flexed her eyebrows in surprise. “That’s funny,” she said. “I was thinking the same thing about you.”

  They spent the next five minutes playing the Where-Do-I-Know-You-From game. It turned out my dad was the connection. They’d played softball together forever ago. There was an awkward moment after my mother said they were separated, but then the tow truck roared into the lot, breaking the silence. A guy in a grimy work shirt dropped from the cab. The way he watched me gave me the creeps. I didn’t think it was my radar giving me another false positive. I went inside to escape his slimy gaze and use the bathroom. When I returned, the front end of our car was suspended by chains. I hated seeing it like that, strung up like some enormous dead beast. Maybe it was a heap of junk, but it was our heap of junk.

  “Can we ride with you to the garage?” my mother asked the driver, who was marking something off on his greasy clipboard. I glanced inside the cab—cramped and grungy—then glanced at the driver with his pit stains and hairy forearms. Suddenly my shorts felt too short, my T-shirt too sheer.

  Jim tapped my mother’s shoulder. I noticed his ring finger, bare and tanned. “I’ll give you a lift,” he said.

  I locked eyes with my mother, pleading silently, Say yes, stupid!

  “If it’s not a problem,” she said hesitantly. “I don’t want to hold you up.”

  Unlike our car—full of dents, with fries on the floor and stickers on the dashboard—Jim’s car was clean and new, with a sunroof and tinted windows. It made me wonder what he did for a living. He didn’t say. He didn’t get a chance. My mother blathered the whole way about all the things that were wrong with our life, everything old and broken and neglected, including herself.

  When we got to the garage, I leaned between the seats, between my mother and Jim.

  “Do you like roller coasters?” I asked.

  “I guess.” Jim looked puzzled. “Why?”

  I shrugged and got out. As Jim’s car pulled away, my mother swatted me with her purse.

  “He likes you,” I said, waving at his taillights.

  My mother blushed. “Don’t be stupid. He was just being nice.”

  “There’s nice and then there’s nice,” I said. “He didn’t have to give us a ride.”

  She didn’t argue. The tow truck growled into the lot, dragging our sad car behind it. While my mother paid the driver, I went inside where it was cool. Dark, too. Just like the bathrooms at Hillhurst Park. Nothing had changed since the last time our car had died. Same stack of worn magazines. Same gumball machine filled with ancient gum. Same pot of burnt coffee. I plunked down in one of the molded plastic chairs and checked my messages. Lisa had sent a video. It was hard to hear over the whir of air-powered tools, but I knew she sounded good. She’d been rehearsing since Monday. If she could make it through open mic without choking, auditions for the fall musical were next week. Even if she didn’t get the lead, I knew she’d make ensemble. Any part on stage was a start.

  “Is that Lisa?” my mother asked, angling to watch. “I didn’t know she could sing.”

  I played it again and then played a game. My mother bought a soda from the machine and asked to take a crack at slicing fruits. I took the game back after she beat my all-time high. All those years of wagging her finger at me and Scott had given her an unfair advantage.

  “I know it doesn’t have all the stores you like,” my mother said. “But if these guys hurry up and let me know what’s going on, we can catch the three-forty to the Pyramid Mall.”

  A chill went down my spine. The Pyramid Mall. I hadn’t been back since I’d made Jerk Face meet me there. Somehow it seemed tainted now, like the way you can’t bring yourself to eat a certain food after you’ve been sick, even if that food wasn’t the thing that made you sick.

  “Don’t get too excited.” My mother folded her arms, annoyed. “I’m just saying, today doesn’t have to be a total waste.”

  But she was wrong. The 3:40 came and went. And then the 4:10. Every time my mother slapped the bell on the counter, another mechanic appeared and promised they were working on it. Four-thirty. Four forty-five. The garage closed at six. I imagined the manager shutting off the lights and locking u
s in for the night. Mom bought a candy bar from the honor snack box and wandered outside. A few seconds later the glass door whipped open. Trish had her game face on. Shoulders squared, eyebrow arched, she bypassed the bell and marched straight into the garage. Familiar territory for her, but judging from the reaction of some of the mechanics, you’d think she’d barged into a men’s locker room. “Excuse me,” she said sharply, ambushing the nearest guy. “Do you think I’m an idiot?” The mechanic looked around nervously, afraid to answer. “Nobody’s even looked at my car,” my mom said. “It hasn’t moved an inch. It’s sitting right where the tow truck left it.”

  The guy tossed a wrench and wiped his hands on a rag. “Let me get my boss,” he said. A few minutes later a man in a polo shirt was leading my mother back to the waiting room. “Sorry about the confusion,” he said. “We’re pretty backed up today.”

  “I understand you’re busy. That’s not the problem,” my mother said, her voice low and steady, one supervisor to another. “But someone could’ve told me that an hour ago instead of leaving me sitting here. If you can’t get to it today, just say so. Ignoring me or saying you’re working on it when you’re not—that’s just bad service.”

  The manager apologized again, but his eyes said something harsh and ugly. A word men reserve for women like my mom, strong women who won’t be pushed aside.

  “Here’s my number,” she said, unaware or undaunted or just plain immune after all her years with the bus company. “Call me when you know something.”

  I followed my mom out into the harsh sunlight. “I guess we’re walking,” I said. Other than the bike path down by the river, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d walked anywhere with my mom. She drove these streets daily, but walking is different. You notice more of the things you’d rather not. As we passed the park with the animals on springs, my mother whispered, “Are those guys dealing drugs?”

  “Welcome to our neighborhood,” I said in a singsong.

  My mother clutched her purse tight to her side. “You don’t walk this way at night?” she asked.