The Lost Girls

by Laurie Fox

“Oh, absolutely,” I agreed. “Let’s discuss it.”

  “Okay, for starters, where will you sleep?”

  I was just about to slither away when I caught the joke and slammed him with his pillow. “You’re a horrible, cruel person! And what’s more, you’re not very nice.”

  “Sorry, Wends. Couldn’t resist.”

  I broke down anyway; I could never keep tears down. Freeman apologized again, but he quickly tired of feeling bad. Like a tot, he appeared to change moods in record time: irritation slipped into glee, boredom into curiosity.

  “Hey, Wendolyn, check this out!” He raced over to his turntable and begged me to listen to “The Chipmunks’ Christmas Song,” a cut off an old LP. After lowering the needle with awesome finesse, he closed his eyes and purred, as if nirvana could be found in a novelty song. When the piece ended, he pounded his knees: “This is the exact feeling I’m going for—distorted happiness.”

  “Ah,” I replied, wondering if he shared the same goal for us.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” I shook my head. “I want my music to capture the unadulterated joy of the Chipmunks—to be a tad off-kilter. Off is good. On is boring.”

  “I’m off,” I said boldly. “Is that why I’m here. Because I’m off?”

  “Yep, afraid so. You’re so off you’re perfect.”

  No one had ever called me perfect before, not even Peter when we were close. Despite it being an obvious lie, I felt an obligation to return the compliment. “And you, you’re so perfect, you’re off the charts of perfection. Can’t even find you on the map—”

  Freeman put a hand over my mouth. “Wenderella, you’ll sleep with me, in this bed, until the Pacific Ocean dries up and the foothills tumble into the sea.”

  Given that the old house was built atop the Hayward Fault, practically at ground zero of a Big One, I realized that geology might undermine his good intentions faster than he knew. Still, his silly promise, stolen shamelessly from song lyrics, appeared genuine, and we both postponed discussion of our couplehood for another, more somber, day.

  FROM the moment I moved my desk and writing files into Freeman’s studio apartment, I became increasingly dizzy-headed and had trouble breathing through my nose. I also experienced a low-level nausea that Freeman’s friends assumed, with clichéd winks and nudges, was a clear sign of pregnancy. I was stumped: I had never been sick in the traditional ways, having favored hallucinations of raffish pirates and fluorescent pixies. Mummy chalked the whole business up to NWS—Neverland Withdrawal Syndrome—but I knew better. It was flat-out anger that hounded me.

  No question, Freeman was an adoring and adorable man; his flair for whimsy was unparalleled on the planet. And he was smitten with me in the way young women expect and deserve. I just hadn’t expected to take care of his world to the extent it needed caretaking.

  It turns out, he had sprinted from an all-nurturing mother to the flimsy security of living with me—he’d been on his own for only three months before I intruded on the scene. So my presence was now more than convenient; it was paramount to getting the laundry washed, the meals cooked, the rent paid on time. Not that Freeman was lazy; he spent all-night sessions at his desk composing music with the dedication of a monk. I couldn’t fault his drive or passion. He just didn’t see those things that needed tending to—and sometimes those things included me.

  My shock was great. How could I have forgotten that a person possessed with a teeming creativity and a daft sense of humor could be heartless on a regular basis? I had always assumed that creativity and heart go hand in hand. It wasn’t that Freeman didn’t enjoy my presence; in fact he insisted on it. He required a ready audience for his pratfalls, but mostly he needed another set of ears to listen to his nonstop stream of sounds. Lucky for me, I liked the music; I was inspired by all the novelty, the raw unvarnished notes. And when he surfaced from his marathon bouts of writing, he would scoop me up in his arms and “notice me” to pieces, hailing me “Wenderella, Queen of Composers!” and tossing me in the air as if I were a stuffed animal. Unfortunately, my nausea made these moments difficult.

  My writing suffered too, not a surprise to women who join forces with charismatic men. Navigating by my own compass during the day—Freeman’s class-load was at an all-time high during his final year of grad school—I had more than enough time on my hands for mythmaking. Each morning at the honey-colored library table we ate on, I set out the tools of my trade: Olivetti-Underwood typewriter, thesaurus, thermos of hot coffee, and, in case I lost my way, A Woman’s Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore and Symbols. Against the wall I propped a eight-by-five-inch glossy of Margaret Darling—her book jacket photo. It was a rare glimpse of Mummy looking gentle and benign, and for some reason, it sustained me.

  Unlike most frustrated writers, I did not hesitate or procrastinate; I filled sheet after sheet with words. Alas, each page bore variations of the same story: a family of deer (father, mother, and two sloe-eyed does) that, despite their obvious affection, cannot keep track of each other. Each eventually wanders off in one of four directions and spends the rest of its days trying to reconnect with the others. Transparent, yes, but like most children’s stories it dealt with the big themes, the psyche’s top-ten list.

  I titled my collection The Dear Deer and Their Wayward Ways, and in spite of the raves it received from Mummy, publishers found it “confused,” “groggy,” “muddled in its structure and ambitions.” All too soon, my promising fables of deer endowed with the gift of speech and high degrees of empathy soured, and I took to writing parables about sickly hedgehogs that harbor thoughts of gorging themselves on cheese in one final food binge. My new allegories weren’t pretty. When I tried to return to the deer chronicles, I couldn’t see the forest animals for the trees, and soon an oppressive lightheadedness plagued me, the dizziness begetting confusion, the confusion begetting a blanket of sadness under which I shielded an unbidden rage. I’d become groggy like my stories.

  After four months of living in a fugue state, it was time for a showdown. On unsteady feet I stalked Freeman around the apartment; he had blown through the door after midnight, ablaze with musical ideas that involved charcoal briquettes and matches. Bent on discovering the best method for amplifying the sound of flames, Freeman had until 9 A.M. the next morning to puzzle this out. Pacing the tiny room in lopsided figure eights, he muttered to himself, even hopping onto chairs and the futon to hasten the flow of ideas.

  I emerged from the bathroom wearing only his pajama bottoms, and waving the tops in the air. “Ahoy, matey!” I said. Freeman dropped the footlong matchstick he’d been using as a baton and shot a rare, penetrating look at my breasts. Then he resumed his high-strung pacing. So this was what I had been reduced to—a strip act?

  I swaggered up to him, and tried to stop him with a kiss at the neck, then a pat on the ass; but he shoved me out of the way.

  “No!” I screamed, and shoved back. At this, he froze in place and furrowed his white-blonde brow. But his mouth wore the smile of betrayal.

  “What’s so amusing?” I demanded. “What’s so fucking funny, you can smirk while I am freaking out?”

  “Sorry, Wends,” he said softly, the corners of his mouth still upturned. “I’m busy and you—you make a lousy Viking, or whatever you are.”

  “I’m a pirate,” I said, folding my arms over my chest.

  “Well, you’re way cute and the last thing a pirate wants to be is cute.”

  “You want cute?” I got up on my toes to meet his eyes. “Let me show you cute.” I ran over to the utility closet, grabbed the broom, and began to swat at my own head with the bristles. When I failed to make a dent, I rotated the broom like a baton twirler and hit my head with the wooden handle. “Oh, much better,” I cried. “I’m finally getting my head together!”

  Freeman wasted no time. He seized the broom from my tensed fists and threw it against the wall; then he dragged me over to the futon and forced me to lie down with him. I slipped under the quilt, ashamed
and flinching with pain.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” Freeman said, shaking me harder than he realized. “What’s this about—your work?”

  “No,” I whimpered through the quilt. “It’s about your work. My work is going brilliantly—all my furry forest creatures have grown fangs and turned into bloodsuckers. I’ve got a whole new series brewing: Bambi, The Bitch from the Hell Regions. A little derivative but it will sell.”

  “Well, I’ve never heard of it, if that’s any comfort.” Stunned by his kindness in the midst of my pain, I could hardly accuse him of ignoring me. But I did.

  “I just feel left behind here, Man.” I emerged from the quilt. “Your work tends to confine me to certain regions—like the Arctic.”

  “What? I mean, what?” Now he looked as stunned as I did.

  “Your really superinventive work?” I continued. “It takes up all the space in this house. You know I support it, that I support you. I just don’t want to be an afterthought. This is such a cliché. It’s just, I am your biggest supporter. I am president and vice president of your fan club. Sergeant-at-arms, too. But I’m also your lover. And, as such, I don’t want to be squeezed in between the hours of one and two A.M. We fan club presidents deserve more—”

  “It’s before one,” Freeman interjected, “and we’re talking now, aren’t we?”

  “Oh, that proves my feelings are wrong, doesn’t it? You are absolutely correct. Because it’s before one, we have no problems! What could I have been thinking?” I pounded my already throbbing head and rolled over on my stomach. The feather pillow swallowed my face.

  “Hey you.” Freeman lightly massaged my scalp. “Don’t hurt the mind I love. It’s my mind too.”

  “What?” I gasped, and flipped over to face him.

  “Your mind is my mind. If we live together long enough, we’ll merge—like in a Vulcan mind-meld—and you’ll instantly grasp my ideas.” He winked at me like a coconspirator.

  “Uh-huh,” I nodded. “And what about my ideas? Will you understand them? Or will they become your ideas?” I narrowed my eyes, hoping to stare a hole in his logic.

  “Which ideas are those?” he questioned, with all the earnestness of a Cub Scout. When I failed to answer, he said: “Sure, your ideas can become mine, if they want to.”

  I shot up from the futon and screamed, “Arghh!”

  Freeman covered his ears protectively, something I had never seen him do. These were the same ears that could listen to the Stones in the front row at the Oakland Coliseum, that relished being in the wake of trains and jets.

  “Did I offend you?” I asked.

  “Well, I need to take care of my boys,” he explained, patting his earlobes. “Listen, I don’t get why you’re so worked up. I mean, we can share ideas, can’t we?”

  “Yes, we can share. I just don’t think you have any idea of my ideas.” I wasn’t so sure I had a handle on them, or if they were worth a hill of beans. “Like, for example, do you know what I’m working on at the moment?” He appeared to be lost in the pattern of his plaid flannel shirt. “Perhaps I could offer a small clue?”

  Freeman exhaled audibly, then stretched his lanky arms around my neck and pulled me solidly to his chest; I caught a whiff of his tangy deodorant, the musk of charcoal on his hands. Just when I expected him to take me up on my offer, he said, “Okay, okay, okay. What do I know?” He scratched his scalp with simian glee. “Well, I know you’re writing about hedgehogs who’ve contracted some sort of disease and gone nuts. I know you’re not happy about this. I know you want to find out why the hedgehogs are so sick and violent. That that’s important to you. I know you haven’t figured out how to make them well again. That the leaves in the forest where the hedgehogs live are also diseased or limp or something. I know I could express this musically, but that words ... words are, you know, tough for me. I know I love you more than words, but the thing is, you are so taken with your theory of being left behind that you can’t see I’m here with you now. That being with you now should count for something. I want it to count!”

  I studied Freeman’s milky cheeks, now flushed pink, and for once, I took him on face value—the pale-blue eyes boring into me, the thin serpentine lips pursed in frustration, the noble aquiline nose. And so it came to pass: I returned to a landscape wherein Freeman was a ghostlike presence, but a ghost who loved me like a rock. Within hours, my nausea and dizziness faded into the background, and I could breathe without resorting to a medley of nose sprays. (I collected nose sprays like other women collect perfume bottles.) I pushed my just-below-the-surface resentment deeper still, and again took up sweeping (as a tranquilizer) and dish washing (because who else would get around to it?).

  Repressed anger served me well: my stories took on a shadow life that would have made the Grimm Brothers proud. Even Mummy lauded me for crafting characters of stunning ambivalence. A rabbit that hated hopping. A bear that couldn’t hibernate. My rabbits and bears were neither good nor bad—they were deformed and troubled characters in a complex world. And the endings of my fables were inconclusive, just like my own story was turning out to be. I was a girl with a boyfriend who would love her till the cows came home, but who was not coming home with the cows himself.

  I CONTINUED to lead the cheering for Freeman’s music. After all, his life of the mind showed no signs of slowing down. Still at work on his thesis, he’d also picked up a modest commission from a fringe arts organization. By now, Freeman had left behind any vestiges of affection for the Chipmunks and for comical sounds in general. His enthusiasm for fire sounds had matured into a religious zeal for water and wind sounds, and his reputation for articulating the elements of nature was growing.

  Our few hours together were spent in the wild; we took labor-intensive hikes with the sole purpose of capturing the sound of flowers, stones, and the occasional beer can bobbing in the creek. During this phase, Freeman dismissed all synthetic sound, and his compositions reflected this bias. I continued to worship the music he created and ended up attending a lineup of new-music concerts that would have tested the soul, and ears, of the most open-minded aficionado. But—hello!—I was in love with a man whom I considered a genius—shouldn’t that alone have defused any problems that surfaced over the years?

  My nausea returned seven months later. Along with the vertigo and stuffed-up nose. Freeman and I sat in silence on the pier at the Berkeley Marina one nippy afternoon, sipping hot chocolate and dangling our feet over the murky gray water; he was bent on recording the slap-slap of the waves hitting the posts, and I was focused on sniffing drafts of sea air, hoping to discern something salty about it.

  “Honey,” I said, propping up my head with my hands.

  “Quiet,” he replied without looking up.

  “Sweet . . . heart.”

  “Not now. It’s high tide. Stand by for greatness!”

  “Oh fuck it,” I said and proceeded to throw up. We both watched in awe as my vomit trickled over the pier and into the chop several yards below.

  “Bad milk?” Freeman asked. His trusty gear had picked up the sound of the expulsion.

  “No, no. Bad dreams. Really, hallucinations. I’m, uh, too dizzy for words. I can’t even tell you.”

  “Tell me what?” he queried.

  “Well, if you shut off that damn machine we can talk!”

  Eleven months of living together and I still hadn’t uttered a syllable about The Neverland. Not a day went by when I didn’t weigh the danger of hiding my history from Freeman against the danger of telling him everything. Confessing all would be a big relief, but I could not risk turning into my great-grandmother, who now required a full-time attendant at home. Neither could I risk ending up like Grandma Jane—missing in action, a dim memory in her mother’s mind.

  Freeman punched the stop button on his tape deck, then grimaced as if in pain.

  “Okay, I can tell you something,” I said, catching my breath. He looked over my head and out to sea. “I’m dizzy and don’t know why. Well
, maybe I do. My dreams are full of people I used to know. Lovely and unlovely people. A man who kissed me against my will and a flying boy who refused to kiss me. Well, he gave me buttons and called them kisses. Isn’t that clever? He was the cleverest boy I’ve ever known.” Freeman arched an eyebrow. “But he was very forgetful. He didn’t remember things. Like me. What was I saying?”

  “Wends. You’re not making sense.”

  “Well, making sense is highly overrated!”

  “Are you trying to tell me about other men in your life? Because I don’t ... I can’t follow your logic.”

  “Because there is none. That’s why I’m nauseous: there’s a dangerous lack of logic in my head.” I held my stomach with both hands and doubled over.

  Freeman watched helplessly as I vomited into the bay a second time. When it appeared that I had finished, he surrendered his denim jacket and threw it over my quivering shoulders. For minutes we said nothing, swinging our feet above the anxious waves. Finally Freeman rubbed his eyes with his fists. “Wenderella, you need to see somebody.”

  “I see you—you’re a body.”

  “Very funny. Someone other than me. Someone who can clear up your confusion. I mean, I know your parents were difficult—are difficult—and even a little kooky, but this is beyond me. I don’t know who these people are, the scary man and the superboy. Are they real guys? Are they characters in a fable you’re working on? I’m thinking maybe you’re being cryptic on purpose. That I’m not supposed to figure this out.” He stood up and shook his curly mop. “Am I right? Are you trying not to tell me more than trying to tell me?”

  “What are you trying to tell me?” I struggled to my feet. “That I’m fabricating my past?”

  “I said nothing about your past.”

  “That’s because you know nothing.”

  “Agreed. So, are you going to tell me? Is that what we’re doing here?”

  “No, we’re here to record the finest waves the ocean has to offer. That’s the agenda of the day. The agenda for all time.”