Nowhere Girl

by Susan Strecker

  That afternoon, with the memory of those kids on stage and their stories of cutting the bottoms of their feet, the tops of their thighs, any place that wouldn’t be noticed, I found myself pulling a restaurant-sharp julienning knife from its special drawer. Then I went to the upstairs bathroom, took off all my clothes, and carefully lay in the tub and searched my body for a place that I could keep hidden. My first cut was under my left breast.

  After that first time in the bathtub, I got better at it. I could do it quickly and cleanly so there wasn’t a lot of blood. And I always did it in a place no one would notice. My parents knew I was uncomfortable with my body, so they didn’t question me wearing long sleeves in the summer.

  Then, without warning, it wasn’t enough anymore. I’d cut and wouldn’t feel relief, only the dull ache of the blade. All cutting did was make a mess and give me one more thing to lie about. It got even worse when the chef from the restaurant came by, and while I sat in my room, I overheard him say he’d been going to AA. He knew he was in trouble when eight drinks no longer did what four used to. It made me feel desperate inside. Nothing, absolutely nothing, would be big enough to take away the pain.

  I’d never told Greg about all that. I’d told him what had come afterward. I didn’t think I could marry him without telling him about Sound View and the time I spent there. But I’d never mentioned the cutting. In the rare moments when I was completely naked, getting out of the shower, or undressing in the closet, he must have seen the scars, but he never said anything, so I couldn’t know for sure.

  I was afraid that a therapist would have some magic touch that would force me to tell all, and Greg would not only realize I’d held something huge back from him all this time but in some weird way, it would be ammunition, a sure sign that I was who he’d thought I was all along. Some broken animal he could fix.

  * * *

  But for some reason, this time, I decided to risk it, and the following day, I found myself sitting with Greg in front of a short, balding man who could have passed for my fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Lord. The couch was long and made of soft leather. Greg sat next to me with his work shoes flat on the floor and his hands folded in front of him.

  Mr. Lord’s doppelganger introduced himself, but I was thinking about how it had been sixteen years, four months, and six days since the first time I went to a shrink after Savannah died, and I missed what he said. Now I glanced around the room, searching for a diploma or a business card, anything with his name on it. It sounded like one of those fancy Pepperidge Farm cookies my mother used to put out when her friends came over. Milano or Mirano or something like that.

  Pepperidge Farm had one leg crossed over the other and a writing pad on his lap. “Cady.” His cheeks were puffy like a squirrel’s, but he had soft, kind brown eyes. “Can you tell me why you’re here?”

  A clock was ticking somewhere. I thought about giving him a semifictional, cookie-cutter response. I’d cry and tell him how I’d fallen out of love with Greg and was lonely. Or that Greg didn’t pay me enough attention, and he was sleeping with his receptionist.

  But I didn’t have the energy for a bent version of the truth, so I didn’t say anything. Finally, Greg cleared his throat. “We’re not communicating well,” he said.

  I could feel Pepperidge Farm’s eyes on me as I studied a spot on his oriental rug. This was a bad idea. This was almost as bad as sitting across from Larry Cauchek.

  “What about when you were first married? Let’s start there. Was it difficult to communicate then?”

  I was wearing camel-colored boots Gabby had picked out last spring when she made me buy something special for myself after Empty Corridors fell off the bestseller list. And I thought about our wedding night. I’d been flattered when Greg asked me to marry him, but also suspicious. That night, I’d come out of the bathroom wearing a short, gauzy bathrobe. I hadn’t tied it tightly like I normally did, and my breasts spilled out. With all the lights on, I stood at the foot of the california king bed and let it fall to the floor. It was the first time Greg had seen me naked with all the lights on. I’d known he’d been engaged before. It was something he blew right by in conversation, something, I noticed, he never mentioned in front of his parents. But when I got into bed that night, prepared to make love to him, he’d closed his eyes and put his head back on the pillows.

  “Cady, I know this is horrible, but I’m not sure I can do this.” And then he told me she’d left him a month before the wedding.

  We’d been married seven hours, and he chose then to explain that the pretty girl, the size 2 doll, left her engagement ring on his nightstand with a note. And then I knew. I’d been happy but wary of Greg’s attention up until that moment, and that’s when I got it.

  “Cady?” Pepperidge Farm asked. “What brought you and Greg together?”

  Years of unspoken rage colored my cheeks. And suddenly, I was glad we were there. Finally, finally, I could tell Greg that I’d known all along why he’d chosen me. “Greg married me because I’m not some Brooklyn Decker beauty who’s going to leave him.” It almost burst out of my mouth. “Men don’t set their drinks down to watch me when I enter a room. Girls don’t love to hate me. My friends’ boyfriends high-five me instead of kissing me when we get together. I can’t tell you if we used to communicate better than we do now, but I can tell you the whole reason he married me is because I am completely safe.”

  Dr. Cookie’s eyes narrowed, and I could feel Greg staring at me.

  He actually sputtered when he spoke. “Don’t act like you’re some wounded bird in all this.” Greg never raised his voice at me. It was one of the things that made me crazy. A fight without yelling wasn’t a fight. It was a discussion. And I was so tired of the discussions that had ruled our marriage, but now he was yelling. “I know why you married me too! And you’re no better than I am!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You did it for your parents.” His words stopped me cold. “You thought that if you had someone to take care of you, they would stop worrying you’d try to kill yourself again. And you know what? I was okay with that. So what if we weren’t the kind of couple who tore each other’s clothes off? Is it so bad to want to take care of someone?”

  “Then why haven’t you?” I was trying to catch my breath. That Greg would blurt out that suicide line left me choked with fury I was afraid would turn to tears. “All you’ve done since I started making money is treat me like a servant. Like my job doesn’t count for anything except to buy you toys.”

  “Cady.” His voice was quiet again. “Try to see it from my point of view. I’m supposed to be the breadwinner. I’m—”

  I cut him off. “Breadwinner? Is it nineteen fifty?” And how dare you talk about suicide in here? How dare you bring that up?

  “Don’t be snide. I want you to understand how hard it is for me to have gone to school for eleven years, only to be outdone by—”

  “Your wife?”

  Greg closed his eyes and threw up his hands.

  I offered my own hands toward Dr. Cookie as if serving Greg up on a platter. “And there it is. Do you understand now why we are irretrievably wrecked?”

  Pepperidge Farm had been silently watching us from his chair. “Those are strong words, Cady. Is that truly how you feel?”

  “Is it?” Greg asked. His eyes had gone glassy.

  What the fuck was going on here? Greg didn’t cry. Especially not over me.

  “We don’t even like each other anymore.” I let myself flop back into the buttery leather. “And we say horrible things when we try to talk about it, so what’s the point?”

  Greg’s arms were crossed over his chest. Mine were down at my sides, like a rag doll. And Dr. Soft Baked Sausalito was motionless with the pad on his lap. We sat there for a little while. Greg finally put his hands on his legs and smoothed out his pants.

  “I’m sorry I lost my temper,” he said.

  I cast my eyes at the rug. “Me too.”

 
And it was true. Tempers were terrible things. Once you said what you really thought, you got hurt, and now the worst thing about me was out. But Pepperidge Farm did an odd thing. He gave me a soft half smile, and I had the distinct feeling that he didn’t judge me.

  “You want to try telling me what drew you together?” Dr. Brussels asked. What the hell was his name?

  Greg leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Cady’s smart,” he said. “Her mind works in fascinating ways.” He swallowed. “I like listening to her talk.”

  When we first met and Greg had a loft in Princeton, we used to roll around in bed and talk for hours. Maybe the sex wasn’t perfect, but the conversation was. “How do you think up those things?” he used to ask. And I’d giggle, and for maybe the first time in my whole life, I actually felt interesting.

  “Greg’s a good listener,” I said. “I can always tell he’s thinking about things after I say them. And he builds on them rather than dismissing them.” I stopped. “And he’s a really hard worker. But so am I, and maybe that’s part of our problem.”

  Pepperidge Farm shifted in his seat. “Why do you work so hard?” he asked. He was watching me.

  My tongue felt dry in my mouth.

  “Cady is a very big name in publishing,” Greg tried to explain when I didn’t speak up. “They want her to turn books out every ten to twelve months.”

  This somehow sounded lame. Double Chocolate Milano wasn’t watching me anymore; his eyes were cast somewhere in the space between us.

  “And”—Greg leaned back and smiled at me—“Cady loves her readers, and she never disappoints them.” Somehow, therapy had turned into a love fest.

  “Yes.” Pepperidge Farm’s eyes drooped as if he were sad or sick. “So I’ve heard.”

  * * *

  Outside in the parking lot, the sun had come out, and it was almost muggy. I fished around in my bag for my sunglasses.

  “Well, that was sort of horrible,” I said.

  Greg stopped walking. “What was horrible about it?” he asked.

  I put my sunglasses on. “Um, yelling at each other in front of a stranger?”

  Greg kept walking, and I fell into step beside him. “I thought it was a relief,” he said. He pointed his key fob at the Mercedes, and it lit up.

  I stopped at the Volvo. “What was a relief?” I watched him walk toward his car.

  He reached for the handle and stood for a minute before he spoke. “To finally talk. To finally tell the truth.” He opened the door, got in the car, and sat there. “I hope it’s not too late.”

  “Me too,” I called after him, but he’d already closed his door, and I watched his car get smaller as he drove away.

  CHAPTER

  22

  “I couldn’t stop talking,” I told Gabby.

  We were sitting on a bench at Baskin Park putting on Rollerblades. Around us, people were jogging with baby strollers and walking along merrily listening to iPods, not realizing that in a few moments I was about to mow them down. I didn’t even know they still made Rollerblades. “When I got in Pepperidge Farm’s office,” I said, “it was like my mouth was a motor.”

  “That’s good, right?” Gabby said while she was strapping those killers on my feet.

  It was Saturday, and when she called, I thought it was to go to Cookies a day early and drink chai and eat sweets with the twentysomething crowd, but she’d insisted I go out Rollerblading with her since it used the same muscles as she would need to hold up her bike during the Hoka Hey. I’d reluctantly agreed to a pair of rented ones that terrified me.

  “It makes me feel totally out of control,” I said.

  Gabby snapped my last binding down. “Good.” She stood up, completely relaxed, balanced on a row of tiny wheels that were about to bring me to an early grave. “You should feel out of control.”

  “What?” I re-Velcroed my kneepad, killing time before I made a complete fool of myself. “No, I shouldn’t. Being out of control doesn’t suit me. Did you bring helmets?”

  “I hate helmets. They make me feel like a dork.” She had a pea head; I couldn’t imagine any helmet would even fit her. “Therapy is all about being out of control.” Gabby twirled her hair around her finger while I struggled to my feet. “You have to sort of pretend no one’s in the room and say every single thing you think in your head, and then you have a breakthrough.” She held out her hand.

  “Or a breakdown.” I bore down against her and tried to stand, but it felt like my knees were going to buckle from the pressure of holding it all together.

  “No time to stress about therapy. We have skating to do.”

  I pushed off against the pavement and stuttered forward.

  “Great job. It’s a gliding motion, like skiing.”

  “I don’t ski,” I reminded her.

  She ignored me. “Put your legs together and then push out. Like this.”

  I watched her pushing one foot out behind her like a ballerina. I had a feeling I would never be able to do anything on Rollerblades but keep my feet awkwardly hip-width apart and stumble along after her while she went twirling off like Dorothy Hamill.

  “I wish you’d brought helmets,” I told her. I was about an arm’s length behind her. “And if we keep holding hands like this, people will think we’re lesbians.”

  Gabby turned her head and rolled her eyes. “So?” she said. “It’s not like we didn’t make out at David’s wedding.”

  I laughed. “I loved horrifying Emma and her parents.”

  “You are an excellent kisser,” she said, puckering her lips. “But now back to business. Squat. Not that much. Perfect. Now push off from the side like this.” I tried to mimic her movements. “How was the serial killer?”

  “He’s a lunatic,” I said. I was getting a feel for the squatting-gliding motion, and although I had no intention of telling Gabby, it was kind of fun. “And fascinating.”

  “You’re brave,” she said. She hadn’t even looked back to see how I was doing. “I mean the guy’s a fucking maniac. Were you terrified?”

  “I was at first. But he was”—I lost my balance but righted myself—“kind of mesmerizing.”

  “What’s going on with Brady?”

  “He’s mad at me.”

  Gabby slowed, but since I didn’t know how to stop, she had to keep going. “That’s good,” she said. “Guys only bother to get mad at you if they like you. What’s his beef?”

  “He thinks I said too much to Larry Cauchek. He hasn’t called me since, and I don’t really know if I can call him. It’s so weird.”

  “Call him,” Gabby told me.

  I opened my mouth to tell her I had no reason to call Brady, but instead I said, “That cop who worked Savannah’s case called me a few weeks ago.”

  Gabby dragged her toe and stopped. I crashed into her, but she grabbed my arms and steadied us both. “Officer Tenney? What did he want?”

  “Tunney,” I told her. “And he’s a detective now. They’re reopening the case.”

  She took my hand and pulled me to a bench. “Holy shit. Why are you just telling me this now?”

  I had no answer. “I don’t know. It’s been so much to take in; I think I’ve been avoiding it a little. I mean, this is all I’ve ever wanted. I’ve spent my whole adult life trying to piece together who could have choked my sister to death. And now this cop shows up out of nowhere and says that’s what he’s going to do.”

  Gabby pulled me into a hard hug. “Cady! That’s great. You must be so excited.”

  All I felt was a stone in my stomach. “What if nothing happens? What if it’s like last time and they spend a year asking questions and scaring the shit out of everyone, and then they give up again?”

  Gabby patted my leg. “No, honey, it’s different now. That asshole Fisher is gone, and Officer Tunney is involved. They’ll catch him.”

  I hadn’t thought I’d tell Gabby about Patrick reopening the case. But now that I had, I felt something like relief. Even if he didn�
�t solve it, at least I knew someone still cared. Gabby and I sat on the bench, not talking. After a few minutes, she got up and offered me her hand. We took off gliding around Baskin Park. The breeze was sweet on my face. I liked how my muscles pushed and then relaxed. I could smell the mud loosening from the winter months and saw tiny crocuses coming up. After a while, I felt secure enough to let go of Gabby’s hand. This great gliding sensation arrived, like I might actually launch. And then fly.

  “This is fun!” I called to her. “I think this is the only exercise I’ve ever really liked.”

  Gabby laughed. She was a little wonky herself, and I liked that, two wobbly friends, gliding along as best we could, trying to move forward around a really pretty park.

  CHAPTER

  23

  What Patrick and Jon Caritano had told me kept popping up in my mind. I’d be driving to pick up Greg’s suits at the dry cleaner, and I’d think of what Patrick had said. I could feel myself looking for Fisher everywhere, and I had a fantasy of getting out of my car and screaming at him in public, but I knew I never would.

  Saturday night, I dreamed that Savannah stood the boys who used to be in love with her—Chapman Sharp, Dylan Freeman, Jeff Kilbourn, and Eddie Zygmont—in a row and then paced back and forth in front of them in her jean cutoffs and a bathing suit top. “Eeny meeny miney moe.” She was pointing at each of them in turn. “Catch a tiger by the toe—” I woke up with the space beside me already empty. Greg had run off to yoga. Savannah’s voice was still clear in my mind, and the mattress was indented as if she’d watched me while I slept.

  Boys. Savannah had found them early. They had exhilarated her much the same way getting model cars at Christmas had excited David. She was unafraid of them. She had a sort of playful power that when I was an adult I recognized in only very beautiful, often famous women. I’d been terrified for her, though I couldn’t have said why then, but now I wondered if it was a premonition. “Tell Mom and Dad whatever,” she’d said on that fateful night when I finally realized Savannah’s childhood was over and mine was still in full swing. “Just cover for me until midnight.”