‘Where’s the baby?’ My mother had asked. When she saw my father’s face, she knew.
He’d forgotten me at his dealer’s house.
She threw him out that night. He was sobbing on the porch three nights later.
I don’t remember the drug dealer, or his wife, or his kind children who were taking care of me when my mother stormed in, and though I won’t defend him, I will say wasn’t left at some gun toting pimp’s house, by any means. The guy was like my father, selling on the side to support his own habit. (Those two kids were adopted from the foster system after both their parents ended up in jail – or dead. Apparently they grew up on a farm in New Hampshire. Not all drug tales have sad endings.)
Dad disappeared after the restraining order, and we moved in with my Grandmother. My mother told me why when I was much older. We moved when she found the house ransacked, one day. My nicer toys, clothes, my mother’s jewelry and our bikes had all been taken. The only thing left behind was my mother’s engagement ring, which she’d stopped wearing soon after the restraining order. She kept it in her jewelry box, next to all the other pieces that were long gone.
I don’t remember my mother being afraid, though she was. I don’t remember her pacing, locking the doors, checking on me a dozen times before bed each night.
I do remember her crying.
Some might call it a sad story, but it was neither sad nor happy to me. It was just a story, and it was mine.
And Stellan knew it well.
“What do you mean he came back?” Stellan asked, his voice low.
I shrugged. “He found me because of some comic strip of mine they published in the Globe. Mass Art student, Faye Tanner Jensen. He hunted me down through the school.”
Stellan shifted his weight onto his elbows, leaning closer across the island. “What happened?”
“He took me to lunch.”
Stellan glared at me. “Is that all?”
I nodded.
He took a deep breath. “Your whole personality changed overnight because your dad took you to lunch?”
“My whole personality didn’t change -”
“Completely,” he said, and it was the most powerful whisper I’d ever heard. “Do you realize how worried we were?”
“Who?”
“Me. Evan. Your mother called me constantly. ‘Something’s wrong with Faye, do you know what happened?’ And I didn’t. I had no fucking clue. Christ, we thought-”
I waited, watching him scratch the back of his neck. “Thought what?”
By the sound of his voice, it sounded as though I’d come home one day an amputee without explanation. “You don’t want to know.”
He wouldn’t look at me. I waited for him to continue, or to glance my way, but he seemed thoroughly riveted by the knotted grain of the kitchen counter.
“I just changed schools, changed majors. People do that every day.”
He shook his head. “You didn’t change your major, Faye. You changed.”
He stood up from the table. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came. Was he right? Had he noticed despite my efforts to hide that event from the world?
He stood there a moment, pushing his chair in. The silent was loaded like a rifle. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
The hurt in his voice left a crack in me, as though someone had taken a chisel to my chest and split it open. “Stellan, come on. I didn’t tell anyone.”
“I’m not anyone, Faye.”
He turned from the table, his eyes nearly closed. I knew this look well.
I moved to speak, to say something, but it was too late and I knew it. “Stell?”
He walked down the hall to the basement door and disappeared downstairs. I knew better than to follow him.
CHAPTER nine
Four days passed. Four days of texting empty air, of my leaving messages on his voicemail, four days of trying desperately to distract myself with sketching up ideas for his game. Yeah, that didn’t help.
I was spending a good part of my day hovering by the kitchen windows, with a cup of tea in one hand and my cell phone in the other. I didn’t dare part with it, just in case it went off.
I found myself desperate for distraction on the third day, enthralled with the birds at my grandmother’s feeders - all the little details my grandmother taught me. I was the designated feeder filler, trudging out there so she could stand by that same window and watch the sanctuary she created.
My grandmother, Edie Tanner, owned this house with my Grandfather, Terry Jensen. She was a powerful creature – a proper lady in every sense. She went to work when WWII broke out, then refused to stop working when the boys came home. She fell in love with my mechanic Grandfather, but refused to marry him until she finished school. She never left the house without pearls and lipstick, and toward the end, never let anyone see how much pain she was in.
These were her windows waiting for Grampy to come home from the War. Later, she watched her daughter playing from these windows, and held her here when her father died suddenly when she was nineteen. Cancer took Grampy Jensen at forty-five. Grammy never so much as looked at another man. She once told me she was waiting to die, because then she would be with Grampy again. Dark words to tell a seven year old, but they made it easier to let her go when she did pass.
My mother had trouble recovering from her loss, but in an effort to ease the transition, I tried to adopt some of her habits – the birds, the fires she set on cooler nights, the homemade quilts, folded with lavender packets to help with sleep.
I spent months at this window after she passed, watching the birds, waking with the sun some mornings to catch sight of the Cardinals that only came with the dawn or the snow. My Grandmother had referred to the red and brown birds as ‘Mr. and Mrs.,’ making me watch as the ‘wife’ waited patiently for her husband before she would eat. I’d always thought that strange, but Grammy Jensen was too busy fiddling with her binoculars to consider the sexist implications of Cardinal behavior. She would stand there with me, her curved fingers on my shoulder as she pointed out the Purple Finches, or the White Breasted Nuthatches. Her scent would surround me; sweet coffee breath, hairspray, Gold Bond powder, and Gardenia. She taught me the calls of the birds; Peter-Peter was the Tufted Titmouse, Fee-Bee was the Chickadee, and though I cannot remember what bird makes the sound, Madge-Madge-Madge-put-on-your-tea-kettle-ettle was her favorite. As a result it was mine, too, they I never seemed to catch it when she pointed it out. I remember laughing with her, the beaded strand of her glasses cord hanging down her soft, folded throat as she mimicked the sounds to teach me. She said she heard that specific call quite often. I told her she was full of beans.
Over the years since her passing - as a teenager, or a returning adult visiting for Christmas - I’d sometimes find myself sitting here by the kitchen window, listening.
I’ve still never heard that call.
Meghan sensed the shift in my mood by the fourth day, and she assembled the cavalry. By noon on that day, I was piled in the backseat of Meghan’s car, with Jackie sitting quietly in the front, heading for the mall for a ‘much needed girl’s day.’
Not sure how needed it was, but no one asked me.
“Don’t ever tell him I said this, but I kinda see where he’s coming from,” Meghan said as she pulled off the highway. I grumbled at her, but didn’t speak. “Hell, I didn’t even know you then, and I’m kinda pissed.”
I watched the world pass from the backseat. “It wasn’t the end of the world,” I said.
Jackie glanced back at me, and I knew she was keeping something to herself.
“Hon, let me be frank – your bat shit crazy, heroin addict father appears wanting to bond and hang out, maybe take you fishing, and you don’t think it’s worthy of telling anyone? Really?”
Meghan was glancing in her rear view at me. I wished she’d focus on the road and not glaring at me for effect.
Deep do
wn, I didn’t begrudge Stellan his upset. Still, not hearing from him for four days was rough to endure. I’d done my best to apologize. I’d done everything shy of dropping by the house. Still, part of me knew I was wrong. All this time, I thought I’d magically hidden the trauma of my father’s resurrection like some emotional Houdini.
“I didn’t want to worry anybody,” I said.
Jackie glanced at me again, but didn’t speak.
“What Jackie? Please, just say it.”
“Oh please, we both know what she’s going to say. You’re a jackass. End of story.” Meghan was a master of conversation.
I gave an exasperated sigh. “Look, telling Stellan would have been the equivalent of telling my mom. Her knowing good old Bentley was back was the last thing I would ever want. Who knows how she’d take it?”
“It sounds like you worried her anyway,” Jackie said finally.
“I know.”
I felt the car shift and looked up to see our destination. “Wait, what are we doing here?”
It was the temporary Halloween Superstore that appeared every year somewhere near the mall.
Meghan shot me a piteous look. “We’re cramming this tits in every costume that’ll fit until I find the one that makes me look like hot sex on legs.”
I had a feeling there would be several contenders for that title. Meghan had great tits.
“So what are you going to do?” Meghan asked. I knew damn well she wasn’t challenging me to a Halloween costume try on competition.
I shrugged, checking my ever silent cell phone. “I don’t know. He won’t talk to me.”
“Yeah, so what are you going to do?” Meghan liked to get to the point.
“I don’t know!”
“You could go talk to him?” Jackie suggested. My stomach tightened. The nerves I felt at the thought of his company had gone from butterflies, to badgers, to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, bubbling with a violent heat deep in my gut. The thought of being met with disdain, or worse, dislike when I set foot in Stellan’s presence was as painful as a shot of rye on an empty stomach. How do I make up for this?
I nodded, finally.
We made our way into the store, and the mood instantly changed.
Meghan was rampaging around the store, collecting costumes and pointing out options she absolutely demanded I try on. I laughed, accepting her challenge of putting on the Tina Turner costume.
Meghan smiled at me. “You seem a little brighter? My winning personality cheering you up?” Meghan asked.
I shrugged. “This is me ‘trying.’”
“Good for you, honey!”
“Fake it til you make it! That’s what they always say, right?” Jackie asked, beaming with a Morticia Addams dress in her hands.
I raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure. Who is they, exactly?”
Meghan pointed at me. “There’s the sarcastic bitch I know and love.”
I shook my head. “Strange that being called a bitch is supposed to put a smile on my face.”
“Hell yeah, it is. Now where the fuck is the sales guy?”
The line outside the changing rooms was four or five people deep, and there was no one in sight, there or near the registers. Meghan’s assertive was threatening to come out hard.
Jackie stifled at the language, Meghan having spoken at a volume for sharing. “Meg, quiet down.”
“What? Everyone else here is thinking the same fucking thing, hon. Let’s be real.”
“She’s just spreading joy, Jackie. It’s her super power.”
Meghan laughed. “Fuck you, Faye. You’ve been hanging out with Stellan way too much. He’s rubbing off.”
I chuckled softly to myself. Were either of them telepathic, they’d have heard my commentary on Stellan and rubbing off. Meghan waved deliberately in the air, calling attention to the sales clerk as he appeared from the back room.
Jackie touched my arm. “What’s on your mind, missy?”
I looked away, covering my smile.
“Jesus, you’d think retail was fucking rocket science based on that guy. So what are you two talking about?”
Jackie changed the subject to Halloween. Evan’s party was just a few days away, and until we veered into the parking lot of the Halloween Superstore, I’d almost completely forgotten. I knew full well that I would be concocting something from my closet if I did decide to go.
Meghan burst out of the changing room in her first costume choice – Wonder Woman.
“God damn, Meghan. You’ve got some nice legs!” I said, my eyebrows raised in approval.
She smiled. “Hell yeah.” She glanced down, framing her crotch with her thumbs and forefingers. “Gonna need a wax first, sweet Jesus.”
Both I and a random guy started laughing at this declaration. Clearly Meghan didn’t care who knew the state of her pubic region.
Jackie explained that she was freshly shorn, and I shuddered in my seat.
“I’d never let some overzealous woman with tweezers go near my – regions.”
Meghan and Jackie both turned to me with looks of patient disdain.
“It’s not that bad. It’s a lot easier than doing it at home,” Jackie said.
Meghan picked her next costume choice from the massive pile. “You’d love it.”
I waved my hands before me. “No, and no. The thought of ripping, and - or yanking anything in that region is just – Christ, no. I’m all set.”
Both Meghan and Jackie stared at me a moment, Meghan’s lips parted just enough to show disgust. “Wait, do you not wax?”
To hear her, one would think I’d just told Meghan I don’t brush my teeth or use toilet paper. I shook my head.
“Then, do you shave?” Jackie asked. I was being tag-teamed on the subject of my nether regions. Fantastic public space conversation, if you ask me.
I shrugged. “If I’m inclined to do anything in that region, really.”
“Oh, hell no!” Meghan was up in arms like an Evangelical wife in the face of Satan worship.
“What? It’s not like anyone is making the rounds to keep me honest in that department.”
“But you don’t do it for ‘the guy,’ Faye!”
I laughed. “Then why would anyone do it?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Meghan said, talking over her shoulder as though she were involving the rest of the room.
Jackie leaned in. “Well, if you want to wear a bathing suit or -”
“Nonononono, don’t try to reason with this woman. She’s far past it,” Meghan said. She glared at me. “What if you want to abuse yourself? Don’t you have standards of lawn care, I mean seriously?”
Jackie and I glanced at one another before I shrugged. “I haven’t really been in the right – I don’t know – state of mind, I guess.”
Meghan planted her hands on her hips, and she was more than a little foreboding in her superhero getup. “You’re not in the right state of mind, because you’re not taking care of business. Take care of business, mind will follow.”
Jackie glanced at me with a hint of reluctant agreement. Was I seriously being ordered to shave my hoohah and masturbate by my friends? Is this really my life? This was the greatest ‘girl’s outing’ of all time.
That was sarcasm, in case you missed it.
“I haven’t had the motivation to even do laundry in the past two months. You think I’m going to magically -”
“We’re not talking about it. It’s decided.”
I glanced at Jackie for help. “What’s decided?”
“Well, to start with, we’re buying you some wax.”
“Oh no, that doesn’t need to happen.”
“Don’t argue. This isn’t Europe. We have fucking standards, thank you. Next thing you’ll tell me you haven’t shaved your pits.”
I didn’t speak.
“Oh sweet Jesus. No wonder you’re not in the right state of mind! Who can think about sex
with hairy pits?”
I scoffed loud enough for the gentleman by the last changing room to glance, curiously. “France does all right.”
“It really is kind of nice, the way it feels after – you know – all smooth and clean. Kevin likes wax day because I’m always in the mood after,” Jackie said, making a point to keep her voice down.
Meghan glared at her. “When are you not in the mood? You’re a housewife whore.”
I laughed heartily, though Jackie quickly smacked Meghan’s arm.
I shook my head. “You’re both bat shit insane, you know that right?”
“No, we’re right. You do it once, you’ll understand.”
“Ha! Can we put money on that, cause I could seriously use the dough?”
“No, but I will buy you the wax.”
With that Meghan disappeared back into the changing room.
I turned to Jackie, half whispering. “Should I be scared, here?”
Jackie smiled. “Looks that way.”
“I’ve clearly offended the crotch gods.”
Jackie laughed.
We sat there watching Meghan try on every plus-size costume in the place. Jackie had already chosen her Little Red Riding Hood costume within the first ten minutes. She’d snagged a Big, Bad Wolf for Kevin, as well. Meghan tried on everything from Batgirl to Bank robber, but when she appeared as a German Beer Maid, I practically jumped out of my seat.
“And oddly enough, I already have the jugs for this one,” she said, groping her chest. I wasn’t the only one in the store laughing with her. I imagined her jostling mugs all over Evan’s multimillion dollar home with a fake German accent and demanded she buy it.
We spent a good two hours in that changing room. I kept glancing at my phone, hoping for a response to any of the many texts I’d sent Stellan. I’d drawn, I’d worked, I’d scheduled my interview with Dennis Shay for that Thursday, and I wanted to share these things with him. His absence was a palpable thing and even two of my best friends couldn’t fill the void his absence created.
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