The Blurry Years

by Eleanor Kriseman

  I didn’t know what I would have done if Daryl had been outside, if he’d been home at all. But I didn’t have to worry about that because Marcus was working out on his machines when I got there. He almost dropped the bench press on his chest when I called out his name.

  “Cal? What the hell are you doing here?”

  I’d already used up my boldness for the day, hitchhiking with that woman. “We left and I didn’t think we’d come back but then we came back but now we’re leaving again and my mom doesn’t want Daryl to know we came back so don’t tell but I just wanted to say goodbye and—” It all came out in a rush.

  “He’s playing a gig tonight,” Marcus said. “You got lucky. You just missed him.”

  I smiled with one side of my mouth. “That’s good, I guess.”

  “You’re fucking right it is. God, Daryl was so mad at your mom. Where did you take off to, anyway? He parked outside your apartment for days. Cost him a shit ton of money to get that car fixed, you know.” I shrank.

  “Fuck, I’m sorry,” Marcus said. “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault at all. I’m an ass. That’s between your mom and Daryl.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said. I wanted him to invite me in. I wanted to tell him that I knew how to make a spritzer now, that I knew how to drink. “She’s kinda crazy.” It felt like a betrayal but also like a relief, saying that.

  Marcus laughed and shook his head. “You’re damn right about that. It’s a wonder you turned out like you did.” The sky was burning purple and orange now. I was still just standing there, wondering how long it would take before my mom wondered where I was. If she would even notice.

  He wasn’t making any move to invite me in so I asked him if we could go up to the roof of the trailer. “You know, like when you showed me the stars?” I pulled at the threads hanging from the ends of my cutoffs.

  Marcus pulled up his tank top to wipe his face, and I saw a line of dark hair running from his belly button down into his shorts. It made me blush and I hoped he hadn’t seen it. I hitched up the strap of my bra from where it had started to slip. I’d started wearing real bras, not training bras, most of the time now. I didn’t really need them, I guess, but I liked the slippery feel on my skin, liked the faint black shadow that showed under my t-shirts. I thought it made me look grown up. I knew my bra was showing through the white tank top I’d been wearing to pack up the apartment.

  “Sure,” Marcus said, shrugging, and stood up. He took my hand and I felt like I did when Starr had rested her hand on mine. “Climb on up.”

  We settled down on the roof. I stretched my legs out in front of me, hoping Marcus would notice how long they’d gotten, even though I was pale from missing a month of Florida summer and spending every day inside. I leaned back, sticking my chest out a bit. The sun had set completely by then, without me even noticing. “So, any constellations to show me tonight?” I said, and looked over at him.

  He smiled. “You can’t get off that easy, Calliope. I want to know why you’re here.” I hadn’t even known he knew my real name. Every other person called me Cal or Callie. I raised my eyebrows. “What? I love that name,” he said. “You know what Calliope means, don’t you?”

  “I dunno. Yeah,” I said. I had no idea. Marcus smiled like he knew I didn’t.

  “The muse of epic poetry,” he said. “It’s Greek. Daughter of Zeus. Like every other woman in Greek mythology. Well, daughter or lover, I guess.” He laughed. It would take years before I understood what he meant. “Where the hell did Jeanie come up with Calliope? Anyway, you know what a muse is?” I shook my head.

  “An inspiration. Someone who gives other people ideas. But the thing about Calliope is, she wasn’t just a muse. All the ancient pictures of her have her writing. She had her own ideas too. And that’s who you are, Calliope. Other people feed off of you, you know that? But you have your own ideas.”

  Marcus knew so much more than I did. Than most adults did. Or maybe what he knew was just more interesting than whatever anybody else talked about.

  “So. Where the fuck did you and Jeanie take off to?” he asked.

  “Oregon,” I said. “We were gonna stay with my grandma but she was dead so we stayed with my mom’s friend from high school instead. But we’re not staying in Tampa. We’re moving to Daytona tomorrow.”

  Marcus shook his head. “Your mom is a piece of work,” he said. “Let me take you home. She’s got to be worried about you by now.” I shrugged.

  “Hey, can I tell you something?” he said. “I missed having you around. Ah, I don’t know what I’m saying. I spent the whole summer just working and working out. Broke up with Kelly. Spent a couple nights on this roof, actually, by accident. Fell asleep up here. Lucky I didn’t fall off. I thought about you guys the whole time. I was so worried about you. You know Daryl even went to your school? To see if they knew anything? God! Jeanie needs to know, if nothing else, that she can’t do this shit to you. It’s not fair.” I’d felt selfish even thinking that. But when Marcus said it, I felt better, like maybe I actually had something to be upset about.

  “I know. It was a pretty shitty summer,” I said. I was still thinking about Kelly. I couldn’t tell if I hadn’t liked her or if I’d just been jealous of her. The last time I’d seen her she’d been wearing those glittery butterfly clips from Circle K, which I thought was a little weird, like, that was something I should have been wearing, not Marcus’s girlfriend.

  “Apparently Oregon taught you some bad words,” Marcus said, grinning. He lay down with his hands underneath his head, elbows sticking out to the side. “What’d you get up to in Oregon, anyway? You all corrupted now, Cal?”

  “No,” I said. “I just drank, mostly.”

  “Ah, fuck,” Marcus said. “How old are you anyway, Cal? Thirteen?”

  “Twelve,” I mumbled.

  “You shouldn’t be drinking at twelve!” he said. “Jesus. Who the fuck gave you alcohol?”

  “My mom’s friend,” I said quietly. “But it was okay. It was during the day and we were just at her house. I didn’t, you know, actually get really drunk or anything.” I thought Marcus would think I was cool but now I was just embarrassed. I’d said the wrong thing.

  “It’s not your fault,” Marcus said. “You’re young.” Everyone kept telling me that, but at that moment it felt like an insult, something blatantly untrue. Every day I was changing. I was shooting upward, shedding my skin, letting my hair grow long and silky down my back.

  I was obsessed with the feel of things, touching everything, because lately it seemed like I was saying goodbye faster than I could keep up with. It was all I could do to drag my hand along the bumpy walls of the apartment, rest my head against the cool tile of the kitchen floor while I was supposed to be cleaning so we could get our security deposit back.

  The last few days in the apartment had been unbearably hot—the power had been turned off while we were gone, and it didn’t make sense to go through the process of setting it back up when we were just leaving again. We slept on top of the sheets, windows open and cheap drugstore fans swirling the tepid air around us. I wore the robe Starr had given me, and nothing else, waking up sweaty and disoriented, clutching for the heavy comforter on the guest bed at Starr’s before I realized where I was. I’d dreamed about her almost every night since we’d left.

  “It’s not a bad thing, being young,” Marcus said, and I tuned back in, flushed from the memory of my dream from the night before. I wanted to be touched, held, feel someone else’s skin on my own. I didn’t know then exactly what desire was. I just didn’t want to be lonely. I just wanted someone to touch me for a little while.

  I put my hand on his arm, just like Starr had done to my hand. Before he could move, I rolled on top of him, positioning my legs directly on top of his, bending my arms to match his. From above, we must have looked like those body outlines Shauna and I used to draw around each other in chalk on the basketball court during recess—loose, larger versions of our own bodies
. For a second, I felt as if I could fall asleep with my head on his chest, using his warm body like a mattress. I wanted to explode with happiness.

  Marcus sat up immediately, pushing me off. Not roughly, but forcefully. “Jesus, Cal!” he said. He looked incredibly sad. “Do you know how old I am?” I didn’t. I had no clue. I didn’t even think what I’d done was wrong. I was aching for someone. I wanted to be wanted. I didn’t yet know in what way.

  I started to cry. “I’m sorry,” I said, wiping my tears away with the back of my hand. “I didn’t, I don’t know.” I looked off in the opposite direction, above the roofs of the rest of the trailer park, toward the interstate that stretched across the sky. “I just want someone to touch me,” I said. “Not like, you know. Just someone to hold me.” I still couldn’t look at him.

  I wanted him to touch me and I wanted to touch all the bodies I’d ever known, wanted to be back in bed when my mom came in early in the morning to spoon me, to be nestled in between my old babysitter and her boyfriend on the couch, to be back in the shower with Shauna in our bathing suits, bumping into each other as we both tried to stand underneath the stream of hot water to rinse the chlorine out of our hair. To be back in Eugene, looking out at the Willamette River with Starr’s hand on mine. I was so, so lonely.

  “It’s just not fair!” I said, more intensely than I’d meant to.

  “You’re right,” Marcus said. “It’s not. And that’s just how it is when you get older. You’re learning. You gotta rise above it.” I had no idea how you were supposed to do that, but I just nodded, and hugged my knees to my chest.

  “Oh, c’mere,” he said, and scooted closer to me, looping his arm around my body. I leaned my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes. He let me stay like that for I don’t know how long. Marcus was a good person. Just another good person I had to leave behind.

  He took me home on the bus—we sat next to each other in silence the whole way. “You mean a lot to so many people, Callie,” he said. “Just because you leave someone behind doesn’t mean they forget about you.” He hugged me and got up at the stop before mine so my mom wouldn’t see him. “Bye, Calliope,” he called out from the front of the bus. The mechanical doors swung back into place, and the bus lurched forward. My right shoulder smelled like his deodorant from when he’d held me on the roof.

  I was sad when I got back to the apartment, but I wasn’t angry anymore. My mom didn’t even ask why I’d stayed out so long, or what I’d been doing. She was finishing another beer and packing up the last of our kitchen stuff, wrapping the big flowery plates in newsprint from the stack of local papers she’d grabbed from the newspaper rack at the drugstore a few blocks away. I hoped maybe she’d start cooking again sometime in our new apartment. We usually ate restaurant leftovers but on her days off we used to have taco night and big pots of spaghetti and even pork chops sometimes. I liked cooking with her beside me, helping me. But we were both different now. We were both older. I could cook by myself.

  She didn’t look up when I came in, just put her thighs on either side of the box to push it closed and started to tape it shut, filling the apartment with the awful sound of tape peeling off of itself. “Next is your bed,” she said. “We can sleep on the mattresses tonight. Just one less thing to do tomorrow morning. Go see if you can get started. Tools are over there.”

  It wasn’t as hot sleeping on the floor that night, maybe because of the storm from earlier, and I slept underneath the sheets. I couldn’t remember any of my dreams when I woke up.

  10

  I first saw Jazz in the parking lot of our new apartment complex, unloading groceries with her mom. She was wearing a bikini top and denim cutoffs and I was jealous because I just had a couple of old one-pieces, faded from chlorine and saltwater. We just stared at each other that time. But we were the only girls our age in the building, and by the end of the week we were best friends. All the old ladies called us “those girls,” and everyone knew who they were talking about. We looked alike, same blond hair and brown eyes, and we liked it. We tried to convince everyone we met we were twins, even though Jazz was a year older, thirteen, which sounded much older than twelve.

  By the end of the summer, the temperature had hit 99 in Daytona Beach. Jazz got her period for the first time. We met Johnny.

  Jazz would come by every morning after my mom left for work, her flip-flops slapping the concrete walkway as she approached. She’d help me fold up the pullout couch in the living room where I slept. Then we’d stand in front of the narrow mirror by the kitchenette, holding our arms against each other to see who’d gotten darker. Jazz had a picture of Christie Brinkley that she’d torn out of a Sports Illustrated at the drugstore. “I want to look like this by the end of the summer,” she’d said. She was perfecting the art of liquid eyeliner, and I’d watch in the mirror as she tried to keep her hand steady, whispering fuck when she slipped up, and licking her pointer finger to wipe the mistakes away. Then she’d practice on me. Later, dark streaks would trickle down the sides of our faces as we tanned on the beach, eyes closed to the afternoon sun.

  After doing our makeup, we’d grab towels and flounce downstairs, armed with baby oil and the sunglasses Jazz had stolen for us from the drugstore. I’d watched her do it. She ripped off the tags and stuck the sunglasses in her hair. She even winked at the cashier on our way out, a pimply boy who went to the high school on North Oleander. Jazz would do anything if you dared her to. Sometimes she dared herself if nobody else was around.

  The day Jazz and I met Johnny I’d been putting off doing laundry until I ran out of everything, so she helped me carry a crusty pile of clothes that smelled of mildew and Hawaiian Tropic to the laundromat. With the extra quarters, we bought bubble gum from the machine outside and filled our mouths with large gobs that hurt to chew. Then we sat on the plastic chairs, sweaty and sticky, and blew bubbles as we watched the laundry turn. Jazz stood next to me while I folded, one pile of my mom’s clothes and another pile of mine.

  We’d only been on the beach for a little while that afternoon when Jazz decided we should give up on tanning. The heat was damp and piercing; you felt as if you would fry if you stayed in the same position for too long. Instead, we walked ankle-deep along the shallows toward the Holiday Inn. There was a snack bar there on the beach, and when this one guy was working there, Jazz could usually get us something for free.

  We were halfway down the beach when Jazz got bored. “I dare you to ask him for a beer,” she said, and tilted her head toward a potbellied man sitting on a faded towel next to a sweating cooler. I shook my head. “Fine then,” she said. “I’ll do it, if you’re gonna be a baby.”

  “Hi sir,” Jazz said. The man looked up and slid off his sunglasses. She leaned over to him real slow, and whispered something in his ear. He scratched his head, then reached into the cooler and handed her a Miller Lite, flipping off the top with his lighter. Jazz smiled sweetly at him and darted back to me, flushed and giddy. “See how easy it is?” she said, as if she almost couldn’t believe it herself. She offered me a sip and even though I didn’t like beer, I took a swig.

  Jazz tossed the empty beer bottle into the ocean when we got to the snack bar. I watched it bob on the surface for a minute, then gather water and sink with the next wave. “Is Derek working today?” she asked the lady behind the counter.

  The lady raised her eyebrows. “No, sweetie. But I’ll tell him some girls came looking for him. You know you’re not allowed to sit here unless you buy something.” Derek always let us sit there without buying anything. I felt like he would have preferred it if Jazz showed up alone, but she always brought me along. The woman turned to the guy sitting next to us.

  “Now what can I get you, sir?”

  “I’ll take a Corona if you’ve got one, and, what the heck, two virgin daiquiris for those two.” He turned toward us and stood up. “Unless you’d rather have pina coladas? I’m Johnny, by the way.” His shoulders were broad and reddened, and when he moved his arm t
o reach for his wallet, I could see the muscles twitch beneath his skin. He was the kind of guy that looked cute from far away but up close when you saw him in sharper focus he didn’t seem that special. Jazz arched her back slightly. I noticed grey clouds forming above us, and the temperature dropping a bit.

  “Hi Johnny,” Jazz said, in that voice she used to talk to men we didn’t know. “I’m Jazz and this is Callie. We’re twins.”

  Jazz slipped onto the stool next to Johnny’s and propped her bony elbows on the counter while she sipped her daiquiri. She swiveled back and forth slowly on the seat. We couldn’t touch the floor from the stools, and our feet swung in the air. She’d only been talking to him for a few minutes when the sky rumbled so loudly the counter shook for a second.

  “Looks like the sky’s about to open up,” Johnny said. “Tell you what—I’m gonna head back up to my place. Why don’t you two come over, watch some television, wait out the storm?” It was about to pour. And we were pretty far from our building. But this would be the biggest dare I’d seen Jazz accept yet. I started to say something, but she grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard.

  “We’ll come,” she said.

  Johnny’s building looked just like ours, and it made me feel better, as if somehow we knew him already. As if we’d been there before. There were the same stucco walls, the mosquitoes gathered in the stairwell, the sandy welcome mats in the hall. “After you,” he said when we got to his door, and we stepped inside. He kept his apartment really cold.

  Jazz and I sat down on the couch, our bare thighs sticking to the leather. Johnny took a seat on the armchair next to us. Up close, the skin on his face was bumpy, and he had angry dots on his cheeks, from shaving maybe, or picking at things he should have left alone. He was both old and ageless, in the way that all adults are until you become one yourself. He could have been twenty or forty.