When I was done, I ran to my room and dressed, carelessly, but Starr wasn’t ready when I walked into her bedroom. She was in the master bathroom, putting on makeup. “Come in if you want, Cal,” she said. “I’m almost done.” I walked in and sat on the lid of the toilet, hugging my knees to my chest.
Starr’s silk robe gaped open, the sash slipping from the loop at her waist. She patted lotion onto her face, then fluttered her hands to help it sink in. Into her hands, she squeezed creamy tan foundation from a tube, then rubbed it into her forehead and cheeks, moving her hands outward and down until she’d covered her entire face. A faint line appeared on the side of her jaw, revealing the whiter skin of her neck. She twirled a poufy brush inside a compact of bronzer, then blew off the excess powder into the sink, speckling the porcelain. Sucking in her cheeks, she drew the brush up and under both cheekbones. She pulled out a pink and green tube of mascara from the giant makeup bag resting on the side of the sink, and leaned close to the mirror to apply it, opening her mouth involuntarily. The robe slipped open completely, and her breasts fell out, hanging down slightly as she leaned forward. “Sorry,” she said, and laughed, but didn’t stop putting on mascara to retie her robe. I stared. I wanted my body to look like Starr’s. I wanted my tiny nipples to grow, wanted to wear a bra that had two separate cups you had to lean into, wanted to go to a tanning bed every other weekend like the older girls at my old school did, so that my whole body would be gleaming brown.
Starr twisted the cap back onto the mascara and retied her robe. I realized I’d been staring, and flushed, watching the redness spread across my face in the mirror like a flood. I shifted my gaze to myself. I hadn’t looked at myself in the mirror like this since Starr had given me a haircut. Now my hair was stringy with grease. My tan had faded from being inside all the time. There was a pimple on my chin, probably from all the time I’d spent with my chin in my hands. I was too young and I was ugly.
Starr didn’t say anything, though I knew she’d seen me looking at her body. She leaned forward again, sash double-knotted this time, and pulled her eyelid taut to draw a line in brown pencil just above her eyelashes. Russ had probably never seen her like this, I thought, turning herself into the version of Starr that she preferred. He’d seen her without makeup, but maybe I was the only one who had seen her in between.
Makeup was supposed to be like armor, but it was actually just as vulnerable as a bare face. When you wore makeup, you were showing everyone how you wished you really looked. You were admitting that you didn’t look the way you wanted to. Somehow this just made me like Starr more.
I was only twelve. But already I knew I would never make myself that vulnerable. There was a connection between being vulnerable and being oblivious forming in my brain, like there was some direct link between every product Starr applied to her face and every night she went to bed early, unaware that Russ and her best friend from high school were staying up late on the couch, smoking and talking.
“Can I have some eyeliner?” I said, to break the silence.
“You don’t need any,” she said, smiling at me from the mirror. “Here,” she said, pulling an aerosol can from beneath the sink. “Flip your head over.” In that moment I would have done anything she’d asked. The spray was cool and powdery, and when she was done, she flipped me upright and sprayed my hairline as well. “There,” she said, fluffing. “Now go wash your face and brush your teeth and you’ll feel a million times better.” She seemed steadier today than she normally was, like today she was the adult and I was the child, instead of us both falling somewhere in between. I ran to the other bathroom and did what she’d told me to. She was right, I did feel better.
When I got back to the bedroom, Starr was standing in front of the closet in her underwear. The floor was carpeted, and I didn’t think she’d heard me come in. Like everything she owned, the bra and panties seemed to have been made for her, but decades ago; fitted to her body but old-fashioned in a way I loved but didn’t understand.
My mom got our underwear from the drug store. Mine were white and boring. Starr’s were lace and satin, and a peachy color that glowed next to her skin, the line where her underwear met her lower back giving me a feeling like envy and aching at the same time. A new feeling.
I had begun to catalogue new feelings and images, to store them away for the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. This was one. How her silhouette went in and out, smallest in the middle; the way her bra rode up just slightly on her back. The wisps of hair grazing the back of her neck, escaping from the bun on top of her head, which I knew she would let down right before she left the house. It was for volume, she’d told a client once while I was reading on the living room couch next to the dryers. “Keep it up like this with a little hairspray and when you leave, shake it out. You’ll have big hair all day.”
I mimicked the way Starr was standing, leaning to one side and placing a hand on the middle of my back, elbow jutting out behind me. For someone who’d only worn robes since I met her, she had a lot of clothing. Everything looked fancy but faded, as if it had been hanging there undisturbed for months. Starr slid a dress off a hanger and slipped it over her head. “Zip me up?” she said. I pulled the zipper up slowly, keeping one hand at the edge of the seam to steady it. My hand brushed against her back as the zipper stopped. Her skin was as silky as her robes. She turned around. “Ready?” I nodded. I didn’t know where we were going but I didn’t care.
Starr’s foot was heavy on the clutch, and we jerked back and forth as she navigated us out of the driveway. “Haven’t done this in a long time!” she said. She was talking about driving but I was pretty sure she was also talking about leaving the house. Her car was clean and the seats were bleached from the sun. We didn’t talk, but it felt like walking home from school with Shauna had been—a silence we could break at any time, but didn’t need to.
We ended up in a park lining a river that Starr told me was the Willamette. I’d grown up minutes away from the ocean but I’d never been this close to the bank of a river before. She smoothed her dress down with one hand before sitting down on a wooden bench facing the river, and patted the spot beside her. “Your mom and I used to come here all the time in high school,” she said. I tried to imagine a teenage version of my mom, older than me by just a few years, and couldn’t. She had no pictures to show me. All I’d known of what she looked like was what I’d grown up with.
“Wasn’t a far walk, and when we wanted to get away, we could come here. Used to be just us—until we got boyfriends, and then they’d bring us here together. But always together. Far as I know, neither of us came here alone. See that?” She pointed to a tall tree in a cluster surrounding a clearing, an X carved into its thick trunk. “That was our spot. Behind that tree. We had picnics there, we drank your grandmother’s liquor there—I even lost my virginity behind that tree. I know that’s not something you need to hear about now,” she said, “but having you around feels—” she stopped. “It feels like we’re what we used to be, me and your mom. Except it’s you that feels like her, somehow.” Keep talking, I thought. Never stop talking. “And your mother feels like a stranger,” she said quietly.
She put her hand on mine. Her skin was smooth everywhere that I’d touched it so far. We watched the river without speaking until the sun was overhead, then she patted my hand and stood up.
The characters in her romance novels still seemed stupid to me but it didn’t feel like they were being dramatic anymore.
Starr had gone to bed at nine. Now it was midnight, and we were still the only people in the house. I was in bed but wide awake, my hand vibrating from where she’d touched it earlier that afternoon. Starr in front of her closet, all lace and peach and tan. Starr’s back, warm against the cool metal of the zipper. Starr leaning over in front of the mirror, spilling out of the silk. Everywhere I’d touched, smooth.
The hand she’d touched went down the front of my underwear. I conjured up scenarios in which we could be t
ogether, each one more implausible than the next. Me feverish, her hand on my forehead, testing my temperature. Me in the bathtub, her walking in on me by mistake, then slipping out of her clothes and climbing in beside me. My fingers were slippery now, and my heart was pounding. I kept going, harder, eyes closed, Starr’s naked body imprinted on my eyelids, faster, guided by the hand she’d touched until my back arched and my legs shook and my body fell still.
Immediately afterward I was mortified. It was as if she’d been in the room with me, as if my fantasies had been broadcast to everyone I’d ever known. In the bathroom, I scrubbed my hands under hot water until a film of soapy residue lined the sink. Flakes of soap had lodged themselves under my nails. It hurt, but I went back to bed like that anyway.
I woke to muffled conversation. The bedside clock, glowing red, told me it was 1:27 a.m. My mom and Russ were on the couch again, smoking again. “So I’ve got some good news,” he said. “No warrant. Nothing. You’re all clear.”
“Oh, thank god,” she said. “That’s such a relief.”
“Yep—you’re good,” he said.
“God, I just—left it all behind, for nothing. I mean, I was worried, but shit. What was I thinking?”
“It wasn’t for nothing,” Russ said. “Don’t say that. You needed to go somewhere safe. Who knows what might have happened.”
Daryl and my mom had been together for years. They fought but most of the time it was about how much my mom was drinking. Sometimes Daryl had slipped me twenty-dollar bills when he knew we were low on groceries. One of my book reports, red ‘A+’ scribbled on the front page, was hanging on his refrigerator.
“Me and Starr, we wanted to have kids real bad,” he said. “Wasn’t in the cards.” My mom’s voice was softer than his, but I could still hear her clearly. “Funny how it works out, isn’t it,” she said. “I never even wanted to have kids.”
I didn’t know what Russ was going to say to that. I didn’t know what she meant, if she was happy to have me or not, if she was so drunk she was saying things she didn’t mean or saying things she meant but was too afraid to say sober. I just knew I didn’t want to hear any more. I put the pillow over my head and held it tight enough so I couldn’t hear anything at all.
My mom and Russ talked every night now after Starr went to bed. And I was listening. I couldn’t sleep if I knew they were out there. The more secrets I knew about somebody, the more powerful I felt. I didn’t have anything else. So I listened. I learned we were headed back to Florida. Russ thought it was a good idea. “Just pay another month’s rent on that place and move out,” he said. “Callie should be back in school in the fall. You shouldn’t have to hide.”
“I can’t afford that,” she said.
“I’ll cover it,” he said. “Just enough to get you back and running. This place is full of waitresses—no wonder you couldn’t find anything here. You know people back there. You’ll make it work. Let me help you.”
“I really can’t let you do that,” she said, in a way that suggested the only option she had was to let him.
“Jeanie, let me. We can afford it. Look, I’m just paying it forward. Someday you’ll do it for someone else. Starr’s always told me what a good person you were.”
“Oh, but I’m not,” she said. “I’m really not.”
The first time she said it, it sounded like she was flirting but the second time it sounded like she really meant it.
Neither of them said anything for a long time. The light in the living room turned off—only the glow of the lamp by the couch was leaking into the hallway. I must have fallen asleep waiting for them to start talking again. When I woke up, my mom was beside me. On the bedside table, beneath an empty glass, was a check from Russell Evans. For a lot of money.
And then we were off. That same morning. “Oh, don’t leave!” Starr said. “You know you can stay for as long as you want.”
My mom gave her a strained smile. Russ was gone already. “It’s okay,” she said. “Gotta go back sometime. Can’t let Callie think you can just run away from your problems.”
“Listen,” Starr said, in a lower voice. “I’d be happy to keep Callie here until you find a job. I wish I could give you some cash, but things are a bit tight right now. But letting her stay here for the rest of the summer wouldn’t be a problem, if you want.”
I wanted my mom to drive back without me. I wanted to stay with Starr and drink spritzers and sweep up hair from the living room floor and be with her all the time, instead of my mom. I wanted to tell her about my mom and Russell and the money, even though it would hurt her, because she deserved to know.
“I can handle my daughter, thanks,” my mom said. Starr’s face drooped underneath her makeup. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I just—I can’t imagine leaving without her. And you’ve already been so generous.” She leaned in and hugged Starr tightly, then grabbed our bags and walked out the door.
Starr ran into the kitchen and came back with the navy silk robe I’d put in the laundry basket earlier that morning. “Take it with you,” she said. “I gave it to you to keep. I’m going to miss you, sweetheart.” She reached out and lifted my hair from my shoulders. “And condition those ends,” she said, smiling, even though she still looked as if she were going to burst into tears. I felt like crying too, but I knew I wouldn’t. It wouldn’t solve anything.
I whispered goodbye, and wrapped my arms around her until I couldn’t stand it anymore. She walked me to the door. Her mascara was running. My mom was already in the car. I climbed into the passenger seat but I didn’t buckle my seatbelt.
I tried to picture the days ahead, what would happen when we pulled out of the driveway. Everything outside would begin to blur again and it would feel familiar, which made me intensely sad, that a blur was something I could get used to.
“I want to stay with Starr,” I said softly. “You’d be happier that way.” I knew it would hurt her, because a tiny bit of it was true.
“You don’t know half the shit I’ve done for you,” my mom said, “half the shit I’ve put up with to make sure you always get what you need. I’m not perfect. But I bend over backward for you.”
“But I like it here.” I was almost whispering by then.
“Starr doesn’t actually want you to stay, Cal,” she said, laughing. “You should know when people are just being polite.” She exhaled deeply. We were still in the driveway, Starr watching us from the doorway in her pink silk, sunlight illuminating her messy morning hair. “You’re stuck with me,” she said. “And you’re lucky. Someday you’ll know.”
09
We’d only been back from Oregon for a couple days, but we were picking up a moving truck the next morning to drive two hours northeast to Daytona, where my mom had found a job and an apartment through her friend Raelynn.
By now I knew not to ask for anything: saying goodbye to Shauna, or even giving her our new address, taking a last drive through the city I’d grown up in, the only place I’d ever known, ever even been, until we’d gone to Eugene. But just because I didn’t ask didn’t mean I didn’t want it. My anger was simmering, tempered by being back home, even for only a little while.
The sky bruised purple and black out the living room window, lightning flashing through the darkness. The rain splattered on the windowpane, blowing sideways from the wind, and the cracks of thunder sent a jolt to my heart each time. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed these summer storms, the ones where the sky sucked away the light so it was dark at 3 p.m., and the rain pelted your skin so hard it hurt.
It wasn’t like we bought stuff all the time but we’d been in that apartment for a while and things just pile up, I guess. We were surrounded by boxes. My mom was moving fast, but she kept looking at the window when the storm started. We weren’t talking much, unless it was to ask each other for the packing tape or something like that. I was learning how to leave places behind. I had already said goodbye to this place a thousand times in my head in Eugene—now
I had to say goodbye to it again for good.
Just like that, the rain stopped, and the sky brightened again. The sun came back through the window, making patches of light on the floor. I started to sweat again, feeling it bead up on the back of my neck, underneath my hair, and on the small of my back. Ever since Starr had cut my hair I’d been wearing it down. It was still long but it looked good and I thought it made me look older.
I told my mom I was going for a last walk around the neighborhood. She didn’t care. She was already a couple beers into a six-pack I hadn’t even noticed her buy, taking a deep sip from a new bottle, the other one on the kitchen table, label peeled off in pieces and crumpled by its side.
It was humid and heavy and comforting outside—I hadn’t known you could miss something as simple as air. Pink streaks were appearing behind the clouds, tearing holes in the cotton-candy sky, sun just beginning to set.
I did mean to just take a walk. I thought maybe I would sneak to a payphone and call Shauna, see if she could get her older brother to drive her by just so we could say goodbye. But I didn’t know if she was upset with me for leaving without a word; if she’d even feel like being my friend anymore. So I didn’t call Shauna. I walked to the corner of Howard and Mississippi and stuck out my thumb, like I was some runaway in a bad movie on TV late at night. A woman in a white station wagon pulled up alongside me, and I was thankful that she was old and that she wasn’t a man. I wasn’t stupid. She looked worried, but I told her I was leaving a friend’s house and my mom couldn’t pick me up because her tire was flat. Then I gave her Daryl and Marcus’s address.
The Blurry Years Page 6