Opens door.
“Hey there.” Juggles keys and plastic grocery bags. Dumps everything on kitchen table. “Didn’t know you were coming. The old warhorse made it, huh?”
Walks a few steps toward me. Puts arm across my shoulders and squeezes. Asks, “Is Beth home?” Doesn’t seem to notice that I am frozen and can’t move. That I am staring at the answering machine. That I have not looked at him since he came in the door. Since he dropped groceries on the table. Since he realized I was here.
He sorts through some mail. Throws junk mail directly into the paper recycling bin. Turns an envelope over and looks at the back. Tosses it on the table to read later. Grabs plastic grocery bags and transfers them to kitchen counter. Opens refrigerator, transfers items from bag to fridge. Shuts fridge. Opens cabinet and takes out glass. Presses glass into refrigerator nook for automatic ice dispensing. Stops when glass is half full of ice. Shifts to automatic water dispenser. Fills up glass. Lifts glass to mouth. Sips carefully because he has filled the glass too high. Looks at his daughter. Me.
“Hello, Hope? Earth to Hope?” Swallows. His daughter is unable to speak. Her throat has dried up. The muscles of her larynx, no longer functional. The Camper fared better than she did. At least that behemoth managed to start itself up. To bring itself back from the dead.
His daughter looks as if she might pass out. She looks white with pain. All the blood of her body draining to her feet. Her feet swollen. Her head light. “Hope?” he asks again. More concerned. Something could have happened to her. Something horrible. Horrible things do happen. They’ve happened to her before.
He takes another sip of water. Out of nervous habit. Or his body has taken over and knows what to do with a glass of water in its hands. He doesn’t know he’s drinking it at all. He knits his eyebrows together. He wonders if he’s done something wrong. Something that might warrant this behavior. Or if there is some horrible news she must tell him. He wonders where Beth is. Sometimes she is home before he is, but it’s not so late that he would worry that she’s late. He spoke to her today already. This morning. She called him again during the day sometime. To tell him how her day was going. To remind him of something. Just to say hello and I love you. He can’t remember what he said back.
“Hope? Are you okay?” he asks, wanting the rote answer of “Fine.”
My legs move me to the side of him and past him and my hands lead me back to the answering machine. I press buttons. I fast-forward to the second beep.
“Hey, Dad. And Beth, I guess. It’s Eden . . . Anyone there? Screening your calls? . . . Hello? Maybe . . .”
“Yeah, hi. Hang on a sec.”
Then the guy wanting the plumber. I hold down the FAST FORWARD button. The end. The machine rewinds itself.
My back is to my father. He doesn’t say anything. He is waiting for me to turn around, and he knows I will. He needs these few moments to run through all his emotions and excuses. But he doesn’t want me to wait too long, because I am scaring him.
He sets his water glass on the kitchen counter.
I turned my head to look at him over my shoulder. I thought this was kind. Or maybe I was scared. He was looking at the floor. He was leaning on the kitchen counter, holding on to his sweaty ice water for support. He looked in pain.
He shook his head a little. He opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t find words. He lifted his hand and dropped it. He repeated all of this. He closed his eyes and scrunched them shut. He raised his free hand in defeat.
“She calls sometimes,” he said.
I looked at my father’s pants. Old jeans that were out of style and too baggy on him. His relatively new sneakers. He only ever wore sneakers. Even though he never jogged or played any sports.
“When?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It’s random. Whenever. Sometimes . . .”
“Sometimes what?”
“It’s not a regular thing. Sometimes a year or so will go by.”
“What does she want?”
“I don’t know. One time she needed some money and asked me to do one of those . . . what do you call it? Like a telegram thing. Western Union. But that was just once. Years ago. Maybe ten years ago. I think she . . . I don’t know . . . I think sometimes she just wants to say hello.”
I started crying. It wasn’t at my father’s deception. It felt strange and unfair to even call it deception, though he let me drive off on a wild goose chase in a rickety camper. But why did Eden call him? Why did she never call me?
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I wiped my nose. I tried to catch my breath. “Where is she?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“What number was she calling from?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you find out?”
“How could I? You can look at my phone bills. They’re all different numbers.”
“Yes, I would like to look at them,” I said. I was angry now. My father was incompetent. He was only good at letting things be and letting people walk away from him. “Where are they? Get them out.”
“You’re going to call all the numbers? First you’re going to have to figure out which ones they are. How are you going to figure out which ones they are? Are you going to call everyone who happened to call the house in a certain time period? And by the way”—he was angry now too; he had given up on the hangdog routine and was now gesticulating with his hands—“that message was from a long time ago. It didn’t get erased. We don’t erase it very often because not many people call the landline. Actually, I’ve been meaning to get rid of it. It’s just a waste of money.”
“But then how would Eden call you? You’ve had the same number since we were kids. She knows it by heart. You keep it for her.”
My father walked by me and stomped up the stairs.
Get a hold of yourself, I said to myself, or he won’t give you anything. He’ll repossess The Camper and put you on a bus back to New York.
He came back downstairs, taking the steps quickly like he was late for something. He threw a manila folder full of phone bills at me triumphantly. “I’m pretty sure she’s in California,” he said. “That should narrow it down for you.”
He turned around and began to climb the stairs again. “Did Mom hear from her too?” I asked.
“How the hell should I know?” he answered angrily without turning around. He walked down the upstairs hallway and shut the door to his bedroom.
I flipped through the old bills. My father was right. They were numbers without names. I could pull out all the ones with California area codes, see if there were any repeat calls. I could call all the California numbers and see if I could recognize her voice. Did I recognize it on the answering machine? When she said “Hey,” and before she said her name, did I know it was Eden in those few seconds?
I walked upstairs carrying the phone bills and knocked lightly on his bedroom door. “Yeah,” he said from inside. I opened the door. He was lying in bed with his clothes on and his shoes dangling off the end of the mattress. The TV was on. I leaned against the dresser and he muted the television with the remote. “I saw her once,” he said. “She asked me not to tell you.”
“She came here?”
“No. She asked me to meet her.”
“Where?”
“Not too far from here. I don’t know why she was here. I thought maybe she was in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. I was trying to put together why she dropped out. I wrote down all the possibilities: drugs, mental illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, religious conversion or cult, involvement in something not entirely legal but politically volatile. Just a theory. Maybe it was something political. I don’t know. Eden’s not stupid. Eden wanted life to mean something. I mean, I’m really just speculating. She never told me anything one way or another. I tried to communicate that if she was involved with something, I could help her out because I’
m a journalist. I said that sometimes raising your profile is good. It builds public support and sentiment. That’s what the SDS and the Weathermen did. That’s how Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers turned themselves in relatively unscathed and got off easy. Eden could’ve done the same thing. Could’ve gotten a book deal. Then you can sell film rights so you can have something to live off of. Or a documentary. That’s good for speaking engagements. If she could build herself up into something like that, I think it could protect her. Instead of all of this hiding. But who knows? Maybe that’s just my fantasy. Maybe it all goes back to what happened. Now this latest thing bringing it up again. It’s not even about anything. It’s a cold case. Random. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Larry killed a girl,” I said.
“Yeah,” my father said, “he did.” He watched TV for a few moments. His eyes looked barely open. He looked old. He needed the TV so he wouldn’t have to look at me.
“We could’ve been killed,” I said.
The downstairs door opened and Beth sang hello in her cheery voice. Beth has doctors’ appointments. Beth could be ill. Beth could die. And then what? And then my father could have another tragedy to nurse for years. To blame for his life not going the way he wanted it to. But this is the way he wanted it to go. He likes these things that define him. His damaged daughters. His trail of women who broke his heart. His lackluster career. His stature among his fellow midlist writers as the real deal who never caught a break. The one who always got passed over for something because he had such bad luck. Kids getting kidnapped. Married a lesbian. Divorced twice. Long-term girlfriend left him because he didn’t have the balls to follow her. One daughter completely disappeared. The other a failed queer playwright. He likes it this way. He likes that we didn’t surpass him. He likes that we survived, barely. If we had died, we would’ve been better than him.
Beth came up the stairs and knocked on the doorframe to the bedroom. As if this house wasn’t hers even though she’s been living here and helping to pay the mortgage and taxes. Even though she’s planted her herbal tea garden out back. I looked at Beth as she tilted her head to the side, as her hair fell away from her face exposing her dangly earrings, as she smiled meekly, as her eyes asked if it was okay for her to enter her own bedroom. Beth was pretty. She was girlish. She had a nice smile. She had nice hair, dark brown with silver tinsel weaving through it. She was trim and almost a vegetarian. I had been so horrible to her. I could’ve been nicer. I wish at times I was a nicer person. But I just couldn’t be. It wasn’t in me.
I felt myself choke up. I was going to cry. I closed my eyes and shook my head, clutching the folder of phone bills to my chest. I mumbled that I was sorry and pushed my way out of the room, down the stairs, and out onto the front deck. I thought I would be able to breathe once I was outside, but the oxygen was too much. The air overwhelmed me. I pulled open the door to The Camper and climbed in. Start, I thought. Please start. Please start right away. I dug the keys out of my pocket and sifted through them to find the right one. Please start, I thought as I jammed the key into the ignition. Please don’t embarrass me. Please let me go. Just let me go.
15
I think I slept. Or I was knocked out.
I was so tired, so uncomfortable, so cold. I coughed.
There was snot in my nose. When I breathed in, mucus got caught in my throat and made me cough again.
I felt like I was underwater and was trying to come up to breathe.
Someone was holding me up by the arms and I tried to get my arms back so I could wipe my nose, but I couldn’t, so I tried to wipe my nose on my shoulder, but I could barely reach it.
I lifted my head. I looked across at Eden. She was tied to a tree. She was wearing only her underwear and a bra. And her headphones around her neck with the cord dangling down. I was tied to a tree too. I was in my underwear too. Eden was looking at me. She had been awake longer than I had. It was just starting to become light. When I was twelve I went to a lot of slumber parties and the big thing to do was to try and stay up all night until it was light out. When it got light out, then we could go to sleep. It was a test to see if you were cool, although I couldn’t remember who started it or who made up the test.
I expected Eden to say something to me, to ask if I was all right. She didn’t say anything. I wanted to ask her what was going on, but I got the feeling I shouldn’t. I tried to move my arms around. My hands were cold and asleep. I couldn’t feel much.
Something moved. I think I made a little noise in my throat because it still wasn’t totally light and I was afraid. And then I saw it was Larry, who had fallen asleep in the dirt and he was moving around now and the dirt and leaves were brushing against his clothes and he was sitting up. He cleared his throat and spat to the side.
He sat cross-legged in front of us and started scratching at the dirt. As the light came up I could see that he was digging with a big knife. So big it looked fake.
He walked away into the woods. When he was gone I looked at Eden. Eden looked at me. I tried to say something. I was going to say, Are you okay? Can you get your hands free? Where are we? What’s going on? How did we get here? But Eden didn’t know the answers to those questions any more than I did.
“Is he going to kill us?” I asked. Eden just looked at me. She was wearing her sea-green bra made of stretchy lace and black cotton underwear. She had bought that bra at the Victoria’s Secret store in the Fashion Square Mall. My eighth-grade friend Ellie liked to go to the Victoria’s Secret at the Fashion Square Mall, and I would go along with her even though I really wasn’t into frilly stuff. But Ellie was, and she would try on stuff and pose for me and ask me what I thought, and I liked that. Ellie spent all of her babysitting money on lingerie stuff. I once bought a white lace bra because I thought Ellie would like it that I bought something with her. But I never wore it because it itched and the seams showed through T-shirts. I usually wore cotton bras and that’s what I was wearing now.
I wondered who had taken off my shirt and my jeans. Larry must have done it when he punched me. My head still hurt from that. But before he punched me we were here, but I couldn’t remember how we got from Larry’s house to here. I wondered what else I couldn’t remember. I wondered what else Larry did, but the only thing that hurt was my head. I didn’t think he did anything else. I didn’t think he raped me. I hadn’t ever had sex so I thought I would know if I had.
Eden started rubbing her back against the tree. Maybe she could shred the rope that way. I leaned forward so the rope around my wrists rubbed against the tree. I didn’t think it would work. It would only work if he kept us here for a long time and we slowly worked at it like a prisoner who tunnels his way out of jail with just a spoon. It could take months.
Larry came back. He unscrewed the top of a soda bottle and cursed when it exploded over his pants. He held the bottle away from his body until it stopped erupting. He shook off excess soda from his hand, transferred the soda to his free hand, and shook off the other one that had been holding the bottle. He tilted the bottle up to the pink sky and emptied it into his mouth. He tossed the empty plastic to the ground, out of his way. He took out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Pulled a cigarette out. Stuck it in his mouth. Lit it with a lighter. Sucked on it. Walked around. Paced. Smoked. Found the empty bottle on the ground and kicked it. Stuck the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Turned his back to us. Unzipped his fly. Pissed.
He zipped up and turned back around. He finished his cigarette and flicked the butt away. He brought his hands up to his mouth. Breathed into them. Stuck them under opposite armpits for warmth. Paced. He bent over and picked up a long stick.
I went through all the rape-prevention strategies I knew of. I used to tuck my long hair into my jacket when I was walking home from a friend’s house after dark so people wouldn’t think I was a girl. No one told me to do that; I came up with it on my own. And no one told me to walk the long way home along the busy street instead of the more direct rout
e. Right now I wished I had my period. That might be a turnoff. He might not want to rape me if he sees I have my period. I wondered if Eden had her period right now. Last summer I got a rash all over my inner thighs and crotch because I had sat around in a wet bathing suit all day after swimming in a lake. It was ugly and red and looked gross. And I was so embarrassed about it I didn’t go swimming the rest of the time we were at the lake that summer. I lied and said I had my period and didn’t want to go swimming, and Luce took me aside and said if I wanted, she would show me how to use a tampon and I could go swimming. I had only had my period a few times and was still using pads. I shook my head because I didn’t want her to know about it and make a big deal about it even though Luce wasn’t the type to make a big deal about things. She would’ve probably given me a tube of some kind of cream and hid it in a towel and said, “Here’s the extra towel that I forgot to give you.” Luce was good like that. She was good about privacy. I would wish that rash back if it meant Larry wouldn’t rape me. But then I remembered my mother saying that rape isn’t about sex, it’s about power and control and violence and it has nothing to do with the way you look. People who say it has to do with the way you look or what you are wearing are trying to blame the victim and justify violence against women. So I didn’t know if any of those things would help me at all. I didn’t know if any of them mattered. I really had to pee. I was worried about peeing. I didn’t want to tell him I had to go to the bathroom. I tried to hold it in. I was worried about it. I tried not to think about it. I thought eventually I was just going to have to release it and pee. Maybe that would make him so mad he would rape me. Or maybe it would gross him out and make him pick Eden. I wondered if I could get through it if he did decide to rape me. If he just did it and it didn’t take long and it didn’t hurt and then he would let us go. If I didn’t get pregnant and I didn’t get a disease, no one would have to know.
Eden Page 15