Donna Has Left the Building

by Susan Jane Gilman

  She made a feeble attempt at a smile. “You realize we’re both going to bed now at 8 p.m.?”

  “Oh. Wow. Well, I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”

  “Deal. Definitely.” She smiled at me grimly. I tried to smile back.

  “Hey, go easy on yourself with your mother,” I said. “You’re living through a heartbreak with her. Just feel whatever you feel.”

  “Yeah. Well.”

  We shared a brittle hug. “Joyeux anniversaire,” she said. But when I left her room and padded down the hall to the sofa bed, I knew both of us were relieved to have me gone.

  I need. I want. Fill me. As soon as I heard Brenda shut the door to her bedroom, I scrambled over to the bookcase and seized the only drug I had left: my phone, finally recharged. My heart pounded as I scrolled down the screen. There seemed to be dozens and dozens of new messages. I swiped through them furiously. There was an entire series from Ashley. While you were away, the first one began, THIS happened…

  It opened up to an AP photo of a rubber raft on an island somewhere in Greece. While you r drinking, some people have real problems, Mom, Ashley had written. #standwithrefugees.

  Her next message had a photo of smokestacks polluting the air and a link to an article on climate change. Another had an update from Ferguson. Like YOU’RE really a victim, Mom? #blacklivesmatter #checkyourprivilege. She seemed to have sent me one every hour. I felt assaulted now from all angles: The horrors of the world, yes, they were horrible—doom and gloom, everywhere—but how the hell was I supposed to deal with it here pretzeled and heartsick on a friend’s fold-out couch? I had barely slept. My pulse grew so loud in my ears, it was like a backbeat. Finally, I texted back. Enuff, Ashley, okay? I haven’t been drinking, just in fight w. your father. #checkyourfacts #imstillsober #givemeafuckingbreak.

  The moment I hit Send I regretted it hugely, even as I also felt a tremor of glee.

  There was a message from our bank (alert: you have a series of out-of-state charges on your VISA); from Colleen Lundstedt (Subject: Where are you? Donna, we got a call from mall in Inkster saying you missed your demo today…); book club; and finally, amid the spam and PK requests, several texts from Austin.

  Hey Mom. Sorry we got disconnect earlier. Glad u r ok.

  Hey Mom, R u still ok?

  Hey Mom, Where r u?

  My thumbs moved frantically over the keyboard. Austin. I am fine. Phone died. Had to recharge. Don’t worry. Immediately after I sent it, I added. R u ok? Love & miss u.

  Almost instantly, to my great relief, I saw a gray bubble pop up on-screen filled with ellipses. He was typing a response:

  Where r u?

  In NYC w Brenda.

  ??? Who???

  The psychic.

  The famous one?

  As if I knew several. Yes, I typed back. R u ok? How was yr day?

  Ok. Math test + Odyssey.

  He continued typing. When r u coming home?

  I sat there for a moment blinking up at the ceiling. Not sure, I finally responded. Just need a little vay-cay. That seemed like an honest and neutral answer.

  We can talk if u want.

  Wow, I thought. I should take a screenshot of that.

  Would love to. But don’t want to wake B or her kid. Tomorrow?

  K

  I love you, Austin.

  Glad u r ok, Mom.

  As I was about to close the app, another message from him blurped up: p.s. Don’t drink, ok? With this were emojis of a thumbs-down and a beer.

  Sniffling, I scrolled through the rest. There were a few emails from Joey. Oddly, I felt a bubble of hope rise as I opened the first message. It had to be a missive of love and contrition. But it said only:

  For laundry, one tab of soap or two? Also, bleach???

  Then: Visa alert re: out-of-state purchases. You bought a guitar, Donna? Seriously? Plus nine pairs of shoes?

  And then: Now reviewing ALL charges. Walmart too? ALL the kids’ pills, D? Tell me you’re not on a bender.

  Tell me you’re not on a bender? Really?

  “Oh, that fucking does it,” I swore under my breath. As if I’d needed any further prompting.

  Of course I’d googled my ex-boyfriend Zack before—c’mon, who doesn’t check out their exes on the internet? Six thousand years of human technological development have culminated mostly for this very activity—okay, second only to porn—and okay, maybe shopping. But in the past, I’d always googled Zack furtively, in a flood of conflicted emotions. When the hundreds of thousands of results popped up for Zachary Phelps—none immediately and obviously linking to him—I’d grown overwhelmed and panicked and quickly closed all the tabs.

  What’s more, this had inevitably compelled me to look up my other former bandmates from Toxic Shock Syndrome, who proved infinitely easier to find. Alfie Montana, once our skinny, gravel-cheeked bassist, was now a top “go-to” studio musician touring with Lenny Kravitz and Ronnie Spector. Danny Thurman, whose only redeeming musical quality back in high school had been his ownership of a Fender Twin Reverb Amp, was now known as DDT, a house deejay in Toronto. His YouTube video remixes had millions of hits. Seeing these, I’d felt sucker-punched by jealousy. “Him? He’s a no-talent. He couldn’t play guitar for shit back in high school.” I’d quickly descended into a tailspin of regret and dissatisfaction. Googling people from my past was just setting myself up to be ambushed.

  But now?

  Z-A-C-H-A-R-Y P-H-E-L-P-S. Methodically, I scrolled through the results. Of course the Olympic swimmer kept popping up, even though his first name was “Michael.” (Thanks, Google.) Yet, otherwise, there were people named Zachary Phelps everywhere. Over four hundred thousand of them, in fact. There was a Zachary Phelps bowling competitively in Australia; a Zachary Phelps newly born in a maternity ward in Macclesfield, England; a Zachary Phelps serving as treasurer of the Elks Club in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; a Zachary Phelps filing for a patent for a gel-based stain remover; and a Zachary Phelps fund-raising for a kennel for rescue dogs in Christchurch, New Zealand. There was even a Zachary Phelps doing time for grand larceny in a federal correctional facility in Talladega, Alabama (I clicked on the photo to make sure it wasn’t my Zack, and it wasn’t, unless my Zack was now part-Asian and thirty-eight years old with dyed-blond hair).

  When it became clear that I needed to winnow my results, I logged on to Facebook. This yielded hundreds, rather than thousands, of individuals with the name Zachary Phelps. But even scrolling through all of these quickly seemed like folly. Then I remembered that in high school, Zachary, ever the showman, had once started spelling his name Zakk and calling himself, only semi-ironically, “the Zakkolator.” The chances were slim, but I tried it.

  And there he was.

  Zakk “the Zakkolator” Phelps.

  And he actually did not look that different. His public page was sparse, but he’d added a profile picture, which I immediately enlarged as much as I could and began scrutinizing.

  He had aged, yes, but only in that eerily indefinable way where you keep looking at someone and wondering what, exactly, is different. All I could see was that his face had lost that cherubic, untested lushness of youth. It was more angular now, the skin itself coarsened and dulled. His smile lines were more pronounced so that they now formed triple parentheses around his mouth, and the flesh around the folds by his nose and lips had weathered, creating the impression of beard stubble, even though he was clean-shaven. His hair, though, was still a wreath of dark, distinctly rock ’n’ rollish curls, if slightly thinner, and his eyes remained hazel and warm and full of mischief, even as crinkles fanned out from their corners. He was staring directly into the camera with an amused, triumphant look that said proudly, unabashedly, Come and get it. And I knew he’d been aiming for exactly that look, too, because I knew Zack in his very essence, and I could actually picture him posing (he seemed to be standing on a scaffold of some sort, with a blurry sky behind him; it was a close shot, from the shoulders up) and directing th
e photographer (his buddy? a girlfriend?): Get me like this! No, wait, hang on. Here, man. Ah, yeah. This is totally a better angle.

  The Zakkolator.

  Seeing him now, in all his charismatic, utter Zakk-ness, felt like a full body blow. And I might as well have been sixteen again, because I actually squealed aloud and clamped my hands over my mouth and started jiggling like a pair of cheerleading pom-poms before I could calm down enough to type. ZAKK!!!!! I punched into Messenger. OMG!!! It’s YOU! HOW AND WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU???

  All caps and triple exclamation points. Just like in high school, too.

  And my heart began pounding frantically as I saw the three gray ellipses appear in the corner of the screen as Zack, wherever he was on this planet, began typing in response. Without waiting, I resumed typing, I WAS JUST TALKING ABOUT YOU!!! AND THINKING ABOUT THE OLD DAYS!!! YOU R STILL CUTE!!! And then, I couldn’t help it. I actually added an emoji. The smile sticking its tongue out.

  And no sooner had I hit the arrow to send the message than Zack’s response appeared: Who the fuck is this?

  And I laughed and typed back: OMG. YOU STILL HAVE A DIRTY MOUTH!!!

  And he wrote back: No. Seriously.

  And then he added: Is this a prank (v. funny, LJ)?

  And then: If u r one of those undercover online cops, I have a teenage daughter. I don’t date them. Go fish somewhere else.

  At first when I saw this, I thought it was Zack teasing me, flattering me that I still looked like a teenager in my profile picture. But then I glanced at my profile picture again. And I saw that, out of habit, I’d logged in not as myself, but as Kayla McMullins, the sixteen-year-old One Direction fan I’d invented to spy on my kids. And Zack: Wow. He had a daughter now?

  Zack, no, it’s Donna Koczynski (formerly Cohen) trying to contact u. I typed frantically. SO SORRY. Logged onto wrong FB page to message u. The one I use to spy on MY teens!

  This last line was crucial if Zack himself was married with kids now. Best to roll it back a little, establish myself as the same.

  After I hit the arrow icon, however, the screen seemed to freeze. There were no more ellipses, no sign that Zack was still typing at all. I pictured him, tossing aside his phone in disgust. A wound grew in my stomach: Had I just blown it? Completely humiliated myself and chased him away?

  But my phone vibrated and a Facebook alert appeared. Donna Koczynski has new Facebook friend request from Zakkolator. Immediately, I accepted, and as soon as I did, I saw a brand-new IM awaiting me on Messenger.

  It read: DONNAAAAAAAA!! BELLA DONNA! OMG, IT’S U!!!! HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU? BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!

  Chapter 9

  Zachary Phelps.

  My sophomore year in high school—before my mother got diagnosed and everything really went to shit—I was part of a small clique of eyelinered, combat-booted malcontents. We’d hang around the bleachers at the far end of the football field after class, smoking pot and listening to the Cure on a boom box. When the weather grew lousy, we convened at Ann-Marie Larkin’s house instead. Set in a weedy lot by the Jiffy Lube, it had the teen dream trifecta: paneled basement, ear-busting stereo system, and no parents around whatsoever.

  Ann-Marie’s boyfriend, Alfie Montana, had an electric bass. Danny Thurman, a kid from my homeroom, was tone-deaf but owned a top-of-the line Fender twin reverb amp. Ann-Marie’s older brother, Dwayne, had a drum kit, and when he and his girlfriend were finished fucking upstairs, he’d saunter down and pull off the plastic tarp and start jamming with us while his girlfriend sat on one of the dilapidated couches in the corner, smoking Virginia Slims and glowering.

  Calling ourselves “Toxic Shock Syndrome,” we entered Dry Lake High School’s 1984 Talent Show. We performed a shrieking three-minute punk rant called “Talent Shows Are for Losers”—and were oddly surprised (and embittered) when we lost.

  One afternoon as we were rehearsing, Rooster appeared in the doorway. “Hey-ho. Dwayne around?” Rooster was almost nineteen but still hung around our high school, driving up in his lowrider with the motor chugging. I’d seen him at our school dances sometimes, too, staggering around the parking lot, hurling empty bottles at the field house.

  In the Larkins’ basement, Rooster unzipped a gym bag and tossed us an ounce of weed bandaged in plastic wrap. “I’ve got some coke and E, too, if you’re interested.” All of us scrambled upstairs to help Dwayne and Ann-Marie ransack the utility drawers for their mother’s “rainy day” funds.

  In the mudroom, a guy my age stood lookout. Lithely built, only a head taller than me, he was dressed, I saw, in a grubby, fleece-lined denim jacket and heavy boots. His shaggy chestnut hair fell to his shoulders, and his eyes were hazel and long-lashed, giving his face a look of perplexed sweetness. He paced around humming to himself—pausing from time to time to pantomime a little air guitar—his fingers flickering by his shoulder and his crotch. Spying Dwayne’s assorted baseball caps, he began pulling them off their pegs, trying them on one by one, then putting them back randomly. When he saw me, though, he stopped, a Tiger’s cap limp in his hand.

  We stood there dumbly for an instant, regarding each other. “Oh,” he said grinning. “Hey.”

  His voice, hoarse but somehow silky—the way it is with people who’ve just woken up—lingered on the “ay” part of “hey,” so that he sounded not at all surprised, or indifferent, or studiedly cool, but eerily familiar. He said it as if he and I already knew each other intimately—as if we’d perhaps just been chatting at Burger King, and I’d gotten up to get more ketchup packets, and now we were resuming the conversation mid-sentence.

  “Oh. Hey,” I said back. In the exact same way. And I experienced a vertiginous sense of déjà vu. I know you. I know you, I thought—my certainty unshakable and profound, and inside, I felt an odd sort of sunrise.

  Rooster tromped back into the mudroom, jamming a wad of money down the front of his pants.

  “Okay, dickhead, you’re up.” He tossed the shaggy-haired guy a set of car keys. “Just try not to shear off the side-view mirror this time, okay?”

  Before I could say anything else, Rooster clamped his hand on the boy’s back and pushed him out toward the yard. The boy glanced back at me. He called out laughingly: “I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about, man. I’m like Dale fucking Earnhardt!”

  “Yeah.” Rooster snorted. “Dale Earnhardt with a learner’s permit.”

  As I watched the van lurch and screech down the driveway, I felt strangely undone.

  “Who was that?” I asked Ann-Marie.

  “Him? Oh, that’s Zack. Rooster’s stepbrother or something.”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. And then I uttered that insipid but most deathless of all teenage girl phrases: “Oh. He’s cute.”

  The day after Thanksgiving that year, my mom sat Toby and me down in our living room in a very formal, unsettling way. She told us that she had not merely been working double shifts at the hospital. She’d been receiving treatments, and they hadn’t been working. The muscle in her jaw twitched as she explained that she was scheduled for some surgery. But the prognosis was grim. There was little more the doctors could do: It was likely a matter of months.

  Is this a joke? Is this a joke? I remember Toby leaping up, his fists pressed to his temples.

  “But Mom,” I heard myself say, “you’re a nurse.” In Vietnam, she’d stitched up men with their limbs blown half to pieces, with their intestines falling out like jellied ropes—they’d lived.

  “I’m a nurse, not a miracle worker, my pet.”

  In a very clinical way, she elaborated upon the details of what was happening to her and what was likely to happen—she seemed driven to impress upon Toby and me the precise scientific terminology of it all, the Latin names of body parts and diseases, the minutiae of the surgical procedure—as if she herself were not the patient but rather an instructor—or a teaching cadaver—at a medical school. As she spoke, all I could do was stare unblinkingly at the mant
elpiece above her right shoulder. On it was an ornate, ridiculous gold clock that her parents had managed to carry with them all the way from Berlin when they’d fled. It was encased in a glass dome like an exquisite pastry. If you looked closely enough, you could see little pastoral scenes painted on porcelain panels on either side: a rosy-cheeked farm boy with a sheaf of wheat, a milkmaid with a yoke on her shoulders, the two buckets swinging as jauntily as her breasts. As my mother talked, I remember thinking, How can anyone die if such a tacky clock exists? It didn’t seem possible that cancer and kitsch could occupy the same universe at the same time. As long as you keep staring at this clock, and it’s here, I told myself, this really isn’t happening.

  In the next weeks, my mother took us to the Detroit Art Institute to see Diego Rivera’s mural. All I was cognizant of was my throat hurting and a grotesque riot of color and us getting caught in a downpour. She took us to the movies in the middle of the day—films neither Toby nor I really wanted to see—and bought us troughs of popcorn and jumbo-sized boxes of Raisinets that went largely uneaten. Pep rallies at school, a fusion-jazz concert up in Ann Arbor, a lecture at the public library on Kurt Vonnegut: She had us embark on a whirlwind of activities together. Yet the fun was forced and miserable. The more we did, the less I saw. The less I felt.

  And then, too soon, she lay inchoate in a mechanized bed, with all its tubes and cords and pulleys. Its rubbery smell of ether and urine.

  The whole rest of the school year was a blur. To this day, I have no memory of the geometry I studied, any novels I read for English class, if I was excused from my finals or not the week of her funeral. That summer, I got a job waitressing at Bob’s Big Boy. I’d wake up for my breakfast shift and find my father sitting in his recliner in the dark, his hand gripped murderously around the neck of a 16-ounce Pabst, his gaze a million miles away like a sniper’s. When I came home later in the afternoon, he was usually gone, leaving only an ashtray and a cache of empties. Sometimes he would disappear for days, oily skid-marks glistening in our driveway, his uncashed disability checks piled on the kitchen table. Toby and I wondered aloud sometimes if we should maybe contact someone—our estranged grandparents in Detroit, the VA, or the authorities—but we worried that if we did, they’d call CPS because at fifteen and sixteen, we were still underage.