Aftercare Instructions
Page 14
There’s a piece of the night that somehow I dug up out of the murky mush of my brain.
I hold on to that memory and toss it around for a minute. I can feel it in my teeth.
Then I remember something else. Ease. Comfort. Something inexplicable and undefinable. Something playful and dreamy.
I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t fall. I can’t fall into something when I’m so lost, or at least I think I’m supposed to be lost. I’m supposed to fall down at Peter’s feet and beg him to take me back. That’s what I wanted mere hours ago. Didn’t I?
Were we holding hands?
At what point in time did I really lose him?
I’m back at Walmart again like I was just days ago. I’m late and I haven’t texted and I have a good long, cold walk ahead of me to get back home. I put my head down and push through it. If the world in New York City felt like vapor, this one feels like stone.
ACT II
SCENE 6
(This scene takes place in a crowded high school hallway. Students whisper and point at GENESIS as she walks through them all. The mood is dreamlike and the action choreographed to music. She grows more confused and more afraid, which we see on her face. Until she meets PETER. They take each other’s hands.)
GENESIS
What is this? Where am I?
PETER
They know, Genesis. Someone told.
GENESIS
About what?
PETER
Your dad.
GENESIS
What do they care?
PETER
People like gossip. Try to ignore them.
GENESIS
They’re not making it easy.
PETER
I’ve got you.
GENESIS
How the hell did they find out? Did you tell anyone?
PETER
No. I would never.
GENESIS
No?
PETER
You know that.
GENESIS
Only a few people know. This doesn’t make any sense.
(The swarm around them grows again, music rises until they are offstage.)
(Cut music abruptly with blackout.)
ALLOW SOME EXTRA TIME AT HOME TO REST
This play takes place in a house. A house full of people waiting for you. A house full of people waiting even though no one usually is. This house full of people could be worried, could be angry, could be fed up with your selfishness.
On a normal day, you wouldn’t have gone to New York City and let yourself get swept up in someone else’s whirlwind.
On a normal day, you’d be home to check on your mom and make sure she’s functioning like a human being.
Okay, and by you, I mean me. I have to take some responsibility here. I have to accept the things I cannot change, or whatever that prayer was I heard in church. The Serenity Prayer. But what is that, really? Who says we can’t change the things we can’t accept?
Here I am, Genesis Johnson, the serene star of my own fucked-up drama, and they’re all waiting for my entrance.
I missed my entrance, so they’ve had to improvise.
This is NOT what will happen:
Gran: Genesis, it’s so good to see you! You look so happy and healthy!
Mom: Genesis, I feel well enough for your sister to come back home and live with us!
Ally: Genesis, you are the best big sister in the whole world!
Okay, that play never existed anyway. But I don’t know what waits for me in there. I don’t think I’ll get grounded or anything, but leaving my mom alone with her parents for that long is really a cluster of dynamite waiting to blow up.
I can’t see through the frosted windows of my house. The orange porch light flickers as if saying: proceed with caution.
I open the front door. It’s unlocked. I half expect to be blown over by a tornado or for a tidal wave of water to flood over me. Too late to save anyone but myself!
Or maybe it’s a house full of ice sculptures, each in an aggravated pose, eternally about to tap their toes in impatience.
But instead there’s music? And laughter? Warmth?
Cast of characters:
Grandma Pauline
Grandpa Joe
Sister Ally
Mother Mary (yeah, I know)
They sit around the kitchen table, each holding a hand of cards. The counter is covered with empty Chinese food containers, and the sink is full of dishes. My mother and grandfather have full glasses of wine.
They look like a family.
And somehow this image is more shocking than anything my wild imagination could have produced.
In fact, they don’t even notice I’ve walked in, and I watch Ally make a move that causes my mother to throw her hand of cards down on the table and my grandma to mess up Ally’s hair lovingly. She wiggles away, and then notices me.
“Gen!” she squeals, and runs over to me.
Then things shift, tighten up.
“Well, look who has finally graced us with her presence,” Gran says.
“Nice of you to show up for your own party,” says my grandpa.
I look at my mom, whose smile has faded, and I get that old familiar feeling that I’m the source of her sadness.
Everything would have been different without me.
But she stands up and joins our hug.
I’m in an embrace with my mother and sister.
And there is no better feeling in the world.
I think about Peter. How he would be grounded for behavior like this, and somehow in my alternate reality, it brings my family together.
My not being here to moderate could have led to explosions, but somehow didn’t.
“Your mother convinced me not to call the police,” says Gran.
“The police?”
“You are two hours late and your phone goes straight to voice mail. Yes, the police.”
“A person has to be missing for forty-eight hours before they do anything,” says my sister.
“Yes, Ally.”
“I was convinced you were kidnapped and held at gunpoint to make that phone call to us, inviting us over into some crazy-dangerous situation,” she says.
“You’ve been watching too many crime shows,” says Gran.
“I watch forensic shows.”
“Our little scientist.”
This is a weird play.
“It’s why I always wear glitter.”
I look at Ally and see her eyelids are, indeed, covered in glitter.
“I gave up that fight,” says Gran. “She’s expressing herself, I’m told.”
“I don’t get it,” I say.
“Well,” says Ally, “if I’m ever the victim of a crime, this glitter will transfer to the perpetrator as trace evidence. And he might not take as much care washing it off as he would, say, blood.”
“Ally!” my mom exclaims.
“Oh, yes, this is what we have on our hands lately.”
“Is this because you live in the city now? Are you scared?” my mom asks.
“No. The glitter just looks really good, don’t you think?”
She twirls around and I want to laugh, but also I hate that she might feel scared.
“No one is going to hurt you,” says my grandmother.
No one will hurt us. This is the most bullshit advice adults ever give. There’s so much that will hurt us; it’s how we take care of ourselves afterward that matters. The aftercare. I can’t tell Ally about all the hurt I’ve been through in the past seventy-two hours, but I do know she knows the same deep and brutal hurt I do, the one that left the nasty, corrugated scar. We got the same wound.
I kind of love that her defense mechanism is glitter anyway. Maybe I should invest in some glitter so no one can hurt me. Or if they do, at least they’ll get caught.
“See, look at Gen. There’s a little from the hug. Turn your face.”
I do and I guess the trace glitter catches the light.
“Now she’s marked.”
“All right, little miss detective, why don’t you find out where your sister has been for the past two hours?”
Ally pulls a notebook from her back pocket, pure Harriet the Spy.
“Fact: Genesis returned to the scene of the crime at nine p.m. Two hours late.”
“Scene of the crime?”
“Well, so to speak.”
So to speak? When did my little sister grow up?
“Fact: missing person was uncontactable. Is that a word?”
No one answers her.
“Uncontactable.”
“Am I on trial?” I say.
“You’re not on trial,” my mom chimes in. “I’ve already explained to my mother that we operate with trust in this house.”
“And not common courtesy, it seems.”
Oh no. Here we go, dropping the land mines. Will anyone step on one, is the question.
“I’m sorry. I really am. I lost track of time. That’s it.”
“Where were you?”
“No trial,” says my mom.
But the questions begin anyway:
Where were you?
Why didn’t you call?
Why did you invite us over if you weren’t going to be here?
How are you handling the home life right now?
And then:
Are you on drugs?
Record screech.
“Excuse me, what did you ask?”
I look at Ally, who is practically eating her hand she’s digging so hard into her nails.
“Given your father’s history, I have to ask,” says Gran.“We’re concerned about your erratic behavior.”
“Erratic behavior?”
“Do you think the school doesn’t call us when you get in trouble?”
I had never thought of that, to be honest. I’m not usually in trouble. I tell my grandparents what grades I get on my report cards, but I didn’t know they were in on the day-to-day.
“And the credit card charge to New Jersey Transit? Two days in a row? Where were you going?”
The trial continues.
“Did you know she was suspended, Mary?”
My mother doesn’t answer. She scratches her arms and looks toward the door out of here.
“We just see now that we should have asked you sooner, Mary.”
“Asked me what?” my mom asks her mother.
“If you were using drugs. We knew he was. We suspected you were too. We should have helped.”
“I’m going to bed.”
I don’t know these stories. No one ever tells me. I’ve had to figure everything out myself. And it’s felt like screaming underwater for years in this house. Why is my mom waking up now? I want to scream at her not to go to bed now that she’s finally here and present. Can she be here? Can we keep Ally? What can we do now? Don’t go hide. Don’t go to bed. Change the things you can’t accept.
But who am I to talk? I could have been here two hours earlier.
“That’s fine. We’re leaving.”
“We are?” Ally asks.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t Daddy ask someone for help?” Ally says. “Why was he so selfish?”
I want to shake her. I want to rip her away from the grandparents and anything they might be telling her. Any skewed image they might be painting of him. I want her to remember the road trips to Maryland and the horses on the beach. I want her to remember how he always had a cigarette tucked behind his ear, but we never saw him smoking. I want her to remember his plays. I want her to remember singing songs like “Who Put the Bomp” and “The Flying Purple People Eater” while dancing around in the kitchen. I don’t want her to only remember he was a junkie who left his family behind.
“He tried, honey,” my mom says. “Sometimes no one listens.”
I don’t want Ally to only think about what it was like when he would leave and we didn’t know when he’d be back. Even though, of course, she’ll always remember the time he didn’t and wouldn’t ever make it back.
“We could have, right? Why weren’t we enough?”
“We were, sweetheart.”
Grandparents and Ally exit stage right. Mom and I sit in silence. Waiting for someone to write the next scene.
(Doorbell rings.)
We look at each other. Are they back?
When I open the door, the person standing there is my former best friend and boyfriend stealer, VANESSA.
ACT II
SCENE 7
(This scene takes place in Ms. Karen’s office.)
MS. KAREN
So, there’s absolutely nothing you want to speak with me about today?
(GENESIS shakes her head.)
No one acting strangely toward you? No unusual behavior?
(GENESIS shakes her head again.)
I don’t know why you’re shutting me out today.
(No response.)
Okay, we’re not talking today.
(No response. MS. KAREN stands up and paces around while she talks. GENESIS remains motionless and silent.)
I’ll tell you what I know. Is that okay?
(No response.)
I know you didn’t tell me everything before.
(No response.)
I know I’m not deaf.
I know people are talking about you.
I know when a person is the center of all this talking, it is hurtful, and I know it’s not your fault.
(GENESIS turns away.)
I know you loved your dad very much, and it doesn’t matter how he died, just that he’s not with you anymore.
I know losing a parent is one of the hardest things a person ever goes through.
I know people talk before they know the whole story.
I know they will never know how you feel.
I know that drug addiction is more common in this community than people talk about.
I know that you are not the only person in this school who has had to deal with this kind of thing.
I know that heroin use in particular can be one of those secret, silent addictions.
I know that there are many more people using the drug than we can keep track of.
I know that it wasn’t your responsibility to keep track of him, Genesis.
Did you hear me? It wasn’t.
GENESIS
If you know so much, do you know who told?
MS. KAREN
I do.
GENESIS
You do?
MS. KAREN
I was told in confidence.
GENESIS
Well, it obviously is not in confidence anymore because the whole school is talking about me. I didn’t know this actually happened. I always thought people were being dramatic when they said “the whole school is talking about you.” It’s actually fucking possible, though. Who told?
MS. KAREN
I know that your knowing the answer to that question won’t change anything.
GENESIS
Are you kidding? It will change everything!
MS. KAREN
I’m glad you’re talking to me now.
GENESIS
Please tell me it wasn’t Peter.
MS. KAREN
Would you like to talk about your relationship with Peter?
GENESIS
No.
MS. KAREN
Do you have any reason to believe Peter would give up information like this?
GENESIS
No.
MS. KAREN
The person who told was only concerned about you.
GENESIS
Bullshit.
MS. KAREN
Genesis.
GENESIS
It is. Whoever told wasn’t concerned for me or they would have kept their mouth shut.
MS. KAREN
Why didn’t you tell me?
GENESIS
Because it’s none of your business.
MS. KAREN
Genesis.
GENESIS
Who was it?
MS. KAREN
I don’t think having that information will help you at all.
GENESIS
It’s KILLING me.
MS. KAREN
Who do you think it was?
GENESIS
Will you tell me if I’m right?
MS. KAREN
(Sighing)
Let’s move on, Genesis.
GENESIS
Peter?
MS. KAREN
You said you didn’t think it was him.
GENESIS
Someone in my family?
MS. KAREN
Let’s focus on the real issue here.
GENESIS
Was it Will?
MS. KAREN
Did Will Fontaine know?
GENESIS
Our mothers are, like, best friends. Why did you answer that time?
MS. KAREN
I didn’t.
GENESIS
Vanessa?
MS. KAREN
Genesis, you need to calm down. You need to redirect this energy.
GENESIS
It had to have been Vanessa. I will never forgive her for this.
(GENESIS runs out of the room, leaving MS. KAREN practically spinning in her chair.)
(Blackout.)
ARE YOU EXPERIENCING ANY REGRET?
“What are you doing here, Vanessa?”
Now it’s my turn to ask questions. Prosecute. I’m taking charge of the script.
Except I don’t really know what I want to ask her. It’s been so long since we’ve actually talked. I step out onto the porch, and close the door behind us. Moisture seeps into my socks.
“I was a real bitch in the bathroom,” she says.
Okay, she can start.
“I wanted you to think I was with Peter. I admit it.”
I flinch at the sound of his name from her mouth.
“I don’t know where everything went wrong with us.”
Why is Vanessa saying what I wish Peter would say to me?
“I can see you’re getting upset. Can we talk about this? About everything? I know you have more to get out. I forgive you for attacking me.”
I still don’t know what to say.
“I guess that’s how you guys deal with things here in this house, right? Just shut it all in?”
“Why would you say that?”
“She speaks!”
I hold on to my hands so tight, they tingle. I just nod at her and try to think about the cold. And the wind blowing around her on the porch.