Someone I Wanted to Be

by Aurelia Wills

  I hadn’t been in Kristy’s house since before she and Corinne had ditched me. The curtains were pulled open to let the afternoon sun shine on the rumpled tan carpet. The air was full of dust and a heavy sad smell. A stack of blue hospital pads, a box of Kleenex, and lotions and medicine bottles were arranged on the coffee table. I could hear Kristy and her mom talking.

  “Leah . . . She’s fine . . . Mommy, she doesn’t need . . .”

  Mrs. Baker teetered down the hallway toward us. It seemed impossible, but she looked worse.

  Her gray skin was stretched like plastic wrap over her skull. A few hairs waved on top of her head. Her pink pajamas pouched all over with emptiness. She’d put on a crooked line of pink lipstick.

  “Leah, where have you been, sweetheart? . . . We’ve missed you. . . . Kristy said you were rehearsing for the school play? . . . I never hear anything. I’ll make sure Brian attends.”

  Kristy’s mom tipped toward the chair. Kristy took her arms and lowered her onto the recliner. She leaned forward, and Kristy stuffed pillows behind her back. Kristy laid the orange-and-brown pom-pom blanket across her mother’s lap, but her mom said, “No, Kristy. It’s too heavy.”

  Kristy pulled off the blanket and threw it on the couch. She hovered over her mother and clawed at her own skinny arm. “Mommy, we’ve got to get you back to your room. The nurse will be here any minute.”

  Kristy’s mom smiled brightly. “Kristy, I want to talk to Leah. Sit down, Leah.” She patted the edge of the coffee table. Her bones seemed as fragile as little twigs. Veins floated beneath her watery skin. I sat down.

  Kristy rocked back on her heels and snapped her gum. “Mommy, Leah doesn’t . . .”

  “Leah, how are you doing? Are you doing OK, honey? . . . Keeping up your grades? . . . I’m counting on you, Leah, to keep Kristy on the straight and narrow. . . . She doesn’t like to read. You get her to read, sweetheart. Tell her some good books. . . . How’s your mom doing? She works so hard. It’s so hard, Leah, for your mother. . . . She’s done such a good job. . . . I’m so lucky with Brian.”

  She started and stopped as if she were pulling down words and sentences that drifted around inside her head. I nodded and smiled and whispered answers to her questions. Her pupils were huge and inky. I could see myself in the shiny black curves. Her eyes throbbed as if from too much feeling or medication.

  Kristy scratched her neck and dragged her fingers through her curls. “OK, Mommy, back to bed.” She lifted her mom up by the armpits.

  Kristy’s mom stood swaying in her tennis socks. She had a funny, crooked smile. “Leah, do you want to see something crazy?”

  I stood up to get out of their way. “Sure, Mrs. Baker.”

  Kristy’s mom’s hands trembled as she unzipped her pajamas and pulled them apart. From the bottom of her neck all the way down to the top of her baggy panties, she had a ropey scar as if she’d been sewn up with purple yarn. Her chest was as flat as an eight-year-old’s. She was skinny and gray like a little starved doll.

  “Have you ever seen anything like that?” she said. She fumbled with the zipper.

  “No, Mrs. Baker, never.” I was afraid she’d see my heart beating through my shirt.

  I’d never be a surgeon. I couldn’t cut Mrs. Baker open.

  With a pale, blank face, Kristy zipped up her mom’s pajamas. She still had her big purse with gold buckles jammed under her arm as if she was about to fly out the door.

  “It’s just life. . . . I just want you girls to know, it’s just life . . . nothing to be afraid of,” said Mrs. Baker as Kristy led her toward the bedroom.

  Ten minutes later, Kristy came back down the hallway with her big round sunglasses shoved crookedly into her hair. She stopped halfway down the hall and stared at the Disneyland picture for a long time.

  “Let’s go,” she said without looking at me. “We’re going to wait in the driveway until the nurse comes.”

  We sat in her car and listened to the radio. Kristy tipped back her head, lowered her sunglasses, and turned the music up. A tear dripped out from beneath her sunglasses, ran down her cheek, and hung from her jaw like a raindrop. It finally fell onto her shirt and left a dark spot.

  She had her fists clenched on her knees. I put my hand over her hand. She grabbed my fingers and crushed them for five minutes, like she was dying and I was the only thing keeping her alive.

  A car turned into the driveway. Kristy gunned the engine and backed out without even waving at the nurse. We drove out of Mountain View Estates and down to Tenth.

  “I should go home,” I said after a minute. “I have a lot of homework to do.”

  “You’ll go home soon enough,” she said. Her mascara had dried in little streaks under her eyes. Her nose was still red and dripping.

  Kristy turned onto Las Vegas Avenue, a strip of gas stations, auto-glass stores, and gun shops. We passed Loco Liquors and the UnBank, where Cindy had gone at least twice, even though they took 25 percent of her paycheck, because she needed wine. The dialysis center — now, that was depressing. Diabetes destroys your kidneys, then you have to have your blood cleaned three times a week, and you could still go blind and lose your toes. The ancient motels with neon signs: CIRCLE K MOTEL: FREE HBO; CHIEFTAIN MOTEL: VACANCY/ICE; 4-U MOTEL/APARTMENTS. A huge red banner stretched across the Howard Johnson: FREE HIGH-SPEED INTERNET.

  Kristy’s hand was a little ball of white knuckles on the gearshift. I felt strange and stirred up after seeing Mrs. Baker. I was going to be a doctor, for sure — just not a surgeon.

  “Kristy, do you ever think about what you want to be? For a career. When you’re older?”

  “I have no flipping idea.”

  Kristy pulled into the parking lot of Paradise Liquors and drove around behind the building. A skanky guy stood next to the Dumpster.

  “Kristy, what are you doing?”

  Kristy didn’t answer. She pulled up next to the guy, who lurched around as he jammed a little bundle into his pocket. The guy was wearing a dingy jacket and grimy jeans. He had surfer hair with long bleached bangs, but his face was creased and he had sores around his mouth. He was like a young man in an old man’s body.

  Kristy waved a folded bill between two fingers like she’d done this a thousand times. “Dude, buy me a six-pack of hard lemonade and you can keep the change.”

  He shifted his jaw back and forth, then snatched the twenty. “Go park across the street under those trees. They got cameras here.”

  “If you don’t come back,” Kristy yelled after him, “you better watch out! My dad’s a cop.” Humming and looking around like she was at a shopping mall, Kristy pulled the car across the street and parked along the curb under the trees. The branches were covered with shiny pale leaves.

  “Kristy, what are you doing? That guy’s going to steal your money. Anyway, what are we going to do? Get drunk and go home? I’m sorry, but I have homework to do.”

  “Leah, don’t be a douche.”

  She pressed her index finger against her mouth and watched in the rearview mirror. Five minutes later, the guy came around the side of the building. He pulled up his hood and jogged with a limp across the street, looking over his shoulder like a criminal on a cop show.

  He leaned on the car roof with one hand, wheezed, and coughed up gunk. He wiped his mouth on his wrist, then held out the lemonade. “Look what I got.”

  “Thanks, dude,” said Kristy, sighing, bored. The guy handed over the six-pack, then stuck his head in Kristy’s window. “Hey, babe, let’s party.” His teeth were brown and broken like pieces of dirty dishes.

  “In your dreams.” Kristy hit the gas and the car screeched forward.

  “You ran over my foot, bitch!” he yelled after her.

  Kristy gunned the car down the street. A woman yanked a stroller out of the intersection.

  I pressed back against my seat. “Watch out! Kristy, slow down. My God.”

  “Open me one,” she said. “They’re twist-off. That guy’s breath sm
elled like shit.”

  “I’m not opening you one.”

  At a stoplight, she grabbed a bottle out of the cardboard carrier and opened it with her teeth. She drank half of it down. “OK!” she said, wiping her mouth. “Where to? God, I think I chipped my tooth.”

  “I don’t know where you’re going,” I said, “but I’m going home. I’m sorry, but . . .”

  Kristy ignored me. She turned onto the freeway, and we zoomed past downtown with its one ten-story skyscraper surrounded by little brick buildings.

  She finished her lemonade, threw the bottle under my feet, and grabbed another one. I stuck the rest of the six-pack behind her on the floor of the backseat. She held the second bottle between her legs and wiggled her front tooth. “I think I actually chipped it!” she said.

  Steering with her elbows, she opened the second bottle and stuck it in my face. “Cheers. Drink this. Don’t be a pain in the ass.”

  I glared at her and took the bottle. It was sweet and syrupy. I was drinking hard lemonade, while Cindy got drunk on Chardonnay. Kristy stretched into the back and grabbed another bottle.

  Her phone went off. “It’s my mom.”

  She put the lemonade between her legs and took the first exit. “Hey, Mommy. . . . We’re at Leah’s. She’s helping me with geometry. I’m having dinner over here. . . . Yes, very healthy. I think it’s like pasta and salad . . . . Yeah, Mrs. Lobermeir knows I can’t eat wheat. Yes, I’ll thank her. Hi, Leah. That’s from my mom. . . . OK, Mommy, I’ll be home before nine, give Daddy a kiss, K. Bye.”

  She looked at me. “We’re going to Damien Rogers’s house.”

  “You don’t even know where he lives.”

  “Victoria Millerfigured it out. Relax. We didn’t go in.”

  “Victoria Miller likes Damien Rogers?” Who was this girl slowly turning the wheel of her car while she chewed her gob of gum like a goat? I wanted to hit her. She and Corinne had always sworn: only I could like Damien Rogers.

  “Not anymore. She’s going out with Dwayne Lewis.”

  We passed Arapahoe High School. The mascot painted on their banner was supposed to be an Arapahoe man with a large crooked nose and a feather sticking off his head. Next to the school was a nail salon with a broken plastic sign.

  Kristy swayed her shoulders to a song on the radio. She waved her bottle in time to the music and turned the wheel with the tips of her fingers. She chugged the second lemonade and tossed the bottle onto the backseat. “Did you know Brian isn’t my real dad?” she said.

  “What are you talking about? Are you serious?”

  She wasn’t smiling. She squinted into the distance and felt around in her purse with one hand. “Damn it, are we out of cigarettes? Yeah, I’m serious.”

  “Are you sure?” I tried to remember if I’d seen any pictures of baby Kristy and her dad. Nope. A bittersweet pain like a beam from a flashlight shone around inside of me. Kristy didn’t have a father, either? Mr. Baker was no more Kristy’s dad than mine?

  “Yes, I’m sure! I was at the wedding. I was like three. He adopted me. That’s why I call him Daddy.”

  “You never told me that.” We pulled up to a stoplight. I waited for the red light to blink off and the green to flash on, and drank half my lemonade. The sugar and the alcohol hit my bloodstream, and softness spread through my arms and legs. Mr. Baker was not Kristy’s real dad. . . .

  Kristy hummed along to the radio and drummed her fist against the steering wheel. She suddenly waved her little finger in my face. “Want to know what I want to be? When I grow up?”

  “What?”

  “I want to be . . . a fashion designer.”

  “What? You don’t even know how to sew.”

  “It’s the only thing I want to do. I found a school for fashion in Florida. Mom says it’s a great fit for me, and she says I can go.”

  “OK. Well, you better learn how to sew. And that is so weird about your dad. I can’t believe you never told me before. Does Corinne know?”

  Kristy looked over at me and bit her lip, trying not to smile.

  “Were you kidding? You’re messing with me. I don’t want to go to Damien’s.” I didn’t want to go anywhere. There was nowhere to go. “I want to go home.”

  “Yeah, I’m kidding!” Kristy fell giggling against her door. “I’m sorry!” She sat up and wiped her nose. “I just wanted to know if you ever wondered what your dad was like.”

  “You’re a freak. No, I actually don’t.” Because he wasn’t even a person to me. He was just Paul, a loser who died in a car crash and ruined our lives. He left me alone with an incompetent parent.

  We drove through a neighborhood I’d never been in. Some kids ran through the yards and rode their bikes down the middle of the street. The sky behind the mountain turned orange. All the shadows were blue. We passed a house with a rusty swing set in the front yard and a big work truck in the driveway. Dandelions exploded in the yard.

  “I want to go home,” I said again. To the home inside my head.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without my dad. He’s just everything to me,” Kristy said. She gnawed one of her knuckles. “I think I chipped my tooth. It feels funny. We just go three more blocks, turn left, and we’re at Damien’s.”

  “When were you there? Did you talk to him?” My vision blurred. There was a hammering somewhere in my body. “I don’t want to go to his house.”

  “Tough!” She drove past a huge apartment building covered with chunky wood shingles and turned onto a street of small houses with big garages and driveways full of trikes, motorcycles, and old cars covered with tarps.

  She stopped in front of a split-level with faded blue siding. An old van and a truck were parked out front beneath a crooked basketball hoop. On the main floor, in a yellow-lit kitchen, a family sat around a table.

  A mob of little boys pulled up on their bikes and surrounded Kristy’s car.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  She hit the horn.

  “Kristy! What are you doing? Stop it! Go! Go! Go!” I grabbed her wrist, but she wrestled away from me and pressed on the horn with both hands.

  A dark-haired woman with bangs and a braid came to the window, shook her head, and lowered the blinds. I covered my face with my hands. My lungs were not working. I willed myself to lose consciousness, and everything got gray and fuzzy.

  “There he is,” said Kristy. “Leah, there’s Damien.”

  I unpeeled my hands from my face. Damien Rogers filled the doorway of his house. He shook the dark hair out of his eyes and yelled, “What do you want? You’re pissing off my mom.”

  Kristy looked over at me with a shy smile — she hadn’t chipped her tooth — then she turned back to Damien and screamed, “Leah Lobermeir wants your body, Damien!”

  She put the car into first, it jerked forward, then the engine died. She started it up again, and the little boys scattered. We shot down the street. She laughed so hard that tears streaked across her face.

  Cindy was on the couch bundled in her terry-cloth sick robe. The TV was on, but the sound was off. She slowly turned and looked at me. Her eyes were puffy, and the tip of her nose was red. She had the blue-and-white shoe box of old pictures open on her knees. The wine box was on the coffee table.

  She dropped the photos back into the shoe box. “Where were you?” She wiped her nose with a crumpled Kleenex and stared at a framed poster with cracked glass that she’d bought for a buck at a garage sale. Monet at the Denver Art Museum.

  “Kristy’s. I had dinner over there. We were doing homework.”

  “Why didn’t you call?” Cindy dropped her head back against the couch and closed her eyes. Without lip gloss, her lips looked so thin.

  “Sorry, we were really busy. And Kristy’s mom talked to me for a long time. She said to tell you that she’s thinking of you. She really likes you.”

  “That poor woman. It’s so tragic.” Water began to seep out the corners of Cindy’s eyes. The tears rolled into her e
ars. She sopped the tears up with a tissue, then twisted the tissue and smiled. Her nose and eyes were swollen.

  “Honey, maybe we should start going to church again. I’m a little down, Leah. Come play Yahtzee with me. We used to have so much fun! Just one game. Come on!”

  “Mom, I can’t play Yahtzee. I was helping Kristy with her homework. Now I need to do my own homework. I don’t have time.”

  “Oh, Leah, come on. One game. I bet you can’t beat me!” She tipped her head back and smiled at the ceiling.

  “Maybe some other night.” I shut my door.

  I had a headache from the hard lemonade but decided that I was going to do my homework. I was going to do all of it. I needed to pull up my grades or I’d never get in to med school, and I’d end up drunk on a couch playing Yahtzee. I sat cross-legged facing the door and pulled out my notebooks and textbooks. I built a little fortress out of algebra and chemistry and Spanish and language arts. It was a red wall. All the textbooks were taped up in shiny Coke book covers.

  “What are you doing in there?” Cindy’s voice sounded fake and high-pitched. “Do you want me to wax your lip tonight?”

  “No! I have to do my homework, OK?”

  “That’s fine,” she said faintly. I heard the bottom of her glass scrape against the coffee table. “I’ll just play a game of Yahtzee solitaire!” She rattled the dice in the plastic cup and threw them onto the table. “Damn!” she said. She shook the dice again.

  I wrote five paragraphs about how literature contributes to society. I wrote that literature made people see things they couldn’t see before, invisible stuff that was right in front of them. Mr. Calvino would like that. It drove him nuts that we only read excerpts. Only AP language arts got to read entire books and write whole papers.

  I took out a probability test for algebra. The two-page stapled worksheet calmed me. I sharpened a pencil and read the first question: “We know that there are six ways to get a total of seven with a pair of standard six-sided dice, and since . . .” I read the problem three times and finally understood, and then it was like I disappeared.