Please See Us

by Caitlin Mullen

  “Did you? Look, Lily, even if you did, I wasn’t the guy you were going to marry. I wasn’t your forever thing. I know that. You had this whole emotional past, this emotional capacity, that I just don’t have. I knew that one day you would see that. That one day, you would leave.”

  “What do you mean, an emotional past? And even if what you are saying is true”—and of course, as he’d said it, I knew in my bones that it was, we were never going to be a forever kind of thing—“that means you get to punish me for it? To publicly humiliate me?”

  “Why do you think I always wanted to hear your stories from when you were a kid? I had—have—no idea what it is like to belong to a family like that. When I say I live in a world of ideas, I mean I only have ideas. How could I live up to you, emotionally, in a relationship? I know things got messed up when your dad died, with your mom and all. But still, I never would have been able to give you that kind of depth. I wouldn’t be able to belong to a family like that and not screw it up one way or another. I wish I could but I can’t.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Maybe some part of me doing that show was about wanting you to see that. Maybe, deep down, I thought you would leave eventually, no matter what I did. I wasn’t trying to punish you, but maybe I was trying to save face, and somehow it ended up that way. But you’re right. You didn’t deserve it.”

  What had I been doing with Matthew, anyway? I thought of the other night, with Clara, the closest I had come to saying that I was with him because I couldn’t have with him the same kind of relationship my parents had with each other. Matthew was sex and money and fun and glamour. He was arguments in the back seats of black cars and making up in his private elevator, gourmet coffee that cost $30 a pound, getting champagne drunk on Tuesday afternoons at someone’s SoHo loft. He was moody and self-centered. He was a distraction. He was a way out of thinking about my father, about the family I had once and didn’t have anymore.

  We sat in silence for a moment, watched the bartender shake a drink, pour it into a tall glass, and shove a wedge of pineapple onto the rim. “Something’s been bothering me. Can I ask what the deal is—with you and Ramona? Why you are pretending that you’re still together? I mean, Matthew, she doesn’t even like you.”

  He stared at me. I looked away but still felt his eyes on my lips. “You’ve gotten a little mean, Lily. It’s kind of fun.”

  “I wouldn’t say mean. I’d say frank. We don’t really have to tiptoe around each other anymore.”

  Matthew sighed and studied his fingers for a moment. “Ramona and I—we wanted to keep it up until all the pieces sold—I had a few things that didn’t fit into the show, and people were buying anything and everything. We didn’t want to rock the boat. I could have taken the fender off of my bike and called it sculpture, and a Chinese millionaire would have dropped a cool two hundred K on it.”

  “How cynical.”

  “She’s actually a complete psycho, Ramona. Decent painter. Impossible person.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Aren’t you supposed to be convincing me to work with her? And I’m not sure that she’s crazy. She’s intense. She knows what she wants and she’s ruthless about getting it. I wish I could be more like her.”

  “All the more reason for you to take the money. You deserve it. You have a goal, something you’ve been waiting to do with your life. And not just because of all that bullshit with the show.”

  “I’m staying here.”

  “Here? What the hell will you do here?”

  “I’m working on something. A project I really care about, actually.”

  “What kind of project?”

  “Portraits.”

  “That’s great, but why does that mean you need to stay here? Lily, you think these people are interested in art? I’ve been here for twenty-four hours and let me tell you, all they care about is getting their rewards points on their stupid players’ cards. They wouldn’t know a Kandinsky from a Klimt.”

  “I think they will be interested. In the right subject, presented the right way. They need art here more than anywhere. They’re losing their jobs. The casinos are failing. They’re still dealing with the aftermath of the hurricane, still waiting for money from the state to rebuild their houses. Their kids are dying of heroin overdoses. You tell me they don’t need art?

  “During World War II Londoners lined up outside of the National Gallery for hours, in the rain, to see one painting. One goddamned painting a month, for just a few seconds at a time. They need something more than to be written off by people like you. Art won’t pay for their kids’ braces or new shoes or the rent on their houses. It won’t stop people from shooting up. It won’t bring jobs back. But I still think it’s important. I think it will matter.”

  “I don’t know, Lily. These people …”

  “Stop saying it like that, these people. You mean people you think are smaller, or less than you, because you can wield a blowtorch and sell a hunk of metal for a bunch of cash. They’re not smaller than you, Matthew. I’m from here. If you think that because you call yourself an ideas person you don’t have to be held accountable for the damage that you do, then you’ve got another thing coming. Pain isn’t collateral damage for art, Matthew. And I’m sorry, but humiliating women and calling it a performance? Come on. Women get humiliated every day, in small stupid ways and in huge, disastrous ones. It’s not art. It’s the most banal thing in the world.” I thought about Clara, how much she must have suffered. How it lacked any beauty, any sense of purpose. “You owe me more and you know it.”

  “I think you’re cutting off the nose to spite the face, if you ask me. You’ll wither. The longer you’re out of the game the harder it will be to get back.” I could tell it was taking effort for him to keep his composure and was pleased to see the tips of his ears go red.

  “Maybe. But I’m going to try this. And it will actually be mine. The Louten Gallery? Let’s be honest. It would always have an asterisk next to it. Brought to you by Matthew Whitehall. It would always be yours, underneath it all. Now, you can either keep pouting or you can wish me luck.”

  He raised his glass, tilted it one way and then another so that the liquor picked up the light. “Good luck, Lily.”

  “Thank you.” I looked down into my drink, swirled it, and finished it in three big swigs. I knew, probably before he did, that he would slide his hand up my thigh.

  “Lil, Lil, Lil. How the fuck did we get here?” He swung his head, brought his face to my ear. “We had fun, though, didn’t we? We had a good thing for a while. You want to come see the mirrors for yourself? For old times’ sake?”

  “Definitely not.” Although I felt the possibility bubble up. This whole city buzzed with the promise of empty, easy, cheap sex. And yet I hadn’t slept with anyone since, well, Matthew. Or maybe there was something erotic in talking about art again, feeling returned to myself a little bit.

  “You’re a terrible liar, Lily Louten. I think you do.” He pressed the pads of his fingers into my leg, and I knew it would be the easier thing to do, to give in. But if I slept with Matthew, it would be my worst fall yet. I didn’t need to seek out ways to make Clara’s prophecy come true, the way I had with Luke and Rob. Opportunities to debase myself—to make my personality, my desires, subordinate to someone else’s—were all too easy to come by. What I needed to do was protect myself. To remember who I was at my core.

  “It doesn’t matter whether I want to. It matters that I won’t.”

  “Have it your way. I think that waitress over there likes me anyway.”

  “She’s paid to like you, Matthew.” But he wasn’t listening anymore. He had reached into the hibiscus plant next to him and picked a hot pink bloom, and was twirling it in his fingers. As soon as I left I knew he would walk over and slide it behind some woman’s ear and tell her, in a voice saccharine with liquor, how beautiful she was.

  CLARA

  I SAW THOSE WOMEN EVERY time I closed my eyes. Anytime I left the apartment, I felt overwh
elmed by my senses. The blare of a car horn from a block away. The bang of a garbage collector emptying a metal trash can into the yawning mouth of his truck. Every man whose stare lingered a little too long. Every person who stepped a little too close.

  I walked through the bus terminal, though in the past I tried to avoid it. At night it could be dangerous, and even during the day it gave me the creeps. Everyone there seemed damaged or deranged. People who heard voices in the silence. Men with palsied hands. Women with shopping carts full of trash and rags and muddy plastic bags. The air-conditioning was cranked all the way and it made the hairs on my arms stand up. I approached the window and asked how much a ticket to California would cost.

  The woman chewed a wad of bright green gum and stared past me for so long I wondered if she forgot I was there. “Well that depends,” she said finally. “Where are you trying to go?”

  “Los Angeles,” I said.

  She clicked her mouse a few times and shook her head. “It’ll take three days, with a four-hour stop in Topeka, Kansas.”

  “That’s okay. How much?”

  “Two hundred and seventy-eight dollars. Plus tax.”

  “I only have two hundred on me right now.”

  “Well, you’ve got two hours before the bus leaves.”

  Two hours—that was enough time to run home, pack some clothes, get the rest of my money. Lily insisted I stay, but I didn’t think I could. I knew that she was worried, that she’d thought I was in over my head ever since she saw the burn marks. But if what she wanted was to protect me, then she needed to let me go. I knew what she meant about going to the police. Maybe I could write down what I’d seen or maybe she could talk to them for me. There had to be a solution that didn’t involve me spending another minute here. I did feel guilty, though, and I wondered if everyone would simply forget about Julie and about the other women if I were to leave. Maybe I could stay just long enough for Lily and me to come up with a plan.

  “Is there another one later?”

  “Not today. Tomorrow. Same time.”

  “Okay, I’ll come back soon, then.”

  She shrugged. I wondered what she would think if she knew about the women. If she would still sit here in her little ticket window, snapping her gum, or if she would also want to get as far away as she could.

  As I walked home I came up with a list of what I wanted to bring. There was a part of me that wondered if I could do this. I didn’t even have a suitcase. I had never tried to make a straight living. Never had a bank account, never finished high school. But I had told myself that in my new life I wouldn’t steal, and I sure as hell wouldn’t sleep with any men for money. But there was so much I didn’t know about where I would live or how. But still, it seemed better to run. To start clean. Maybe that’s what the Four of Pentacles meant—I could give up all of the bad things I did here, give up the money, once I was free.

  When I got home there was a man leaning against the door of the shop, a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. Something about him felt familiar, but I couldn’t say what. My memories of anything before this summer felt impossible, like something I had seen in a movie or TV show. One of my teachers? Someone Des partied with? A client for a reading? I couldn’t remember. All I knew was that his calm gave me a bad feeling—the sense that there was something slippery and secretive underneath it.

  “Can I help you?” I said, hoping my voice sounded mean. I was through with talking to everyone like they were the most exciting thing that had happened to me that day.

  He reached into his pocket, fished out a piece of paper. I was surprised to see it was one of our business cards, creased in the middle and bent at the corners. “Do you have time for a reading?” he asked.

  “Can’t, sorry,” I said. “All booked up today.” He might be a cop, lurking around, waiting for his chance to bust us. He had that squirrely, suspicious energy about him. But I was so close to escaping, to leaving all of that trouble behind for Des to deal with for once. Let her get caught, I thought. I don’t even care.

  He smiled, looked at the darkened shop. I disliked him even more then. “Well, that’s good news for you, then. Maybe you’ll be able to fit me in next time.” I hated the way he was measuring me. Probably there for a private reading, another pig Des had found at the club. I was surprised to feel the familiar tingling start up again—and then I saw a vision of a woman. Her head was turned away from him but she had a lovely curtain of shiny blonde hair. In the vision I could smell her, something floral, heavy. Roses, maybe. Or another flower I couldn’t name. It was such a quick glimpse that I wondered if he even noticed a change in me. He was still staring when I came out of the vision, like he was waiting for me to speak. But I was feeling selfish—I didn’t want or need to attract his attention, didn’t need to flash around what I saw, this little bit of his life that he didn’t even know he had given up to me.

  “Yeah, well, be sure to ask for Des when you come back. She’s got the real talent. I’m just an apprentice, after all.”

  “I’ll do that,” he said, and pulled on the brim of his hat, tipping it. I waited until he was half a block away to go inside, feeling a combination of relief and unease as I watched his back recede down the boardwalk. It doesn’t matter anymore, I told myself. You’re almost out of here.

  I knew that upstairs Des would be in her last frenzy of primping before her shift—curling her eyelashes with one hand and smearing lotion along her calf with another. So I was surprised when I stepped into the apartment and it was quiet. No sound of her swearing under her breath, no clacking of compacts. If she was gone, it would be easier to slip into her room and look for my birth certificate, my Social Security card, which she had squirreled away somewhere years before. Maybe anticipating a moment like this, when I was ready to break free.

  “Des? Des?” I called. I opened the fridge, studied the half-full bottles of Pepsi, the package of string cheese, closed the door again. When I find my mother, I thought, I will fill our fridge with cut fruit and pink lemonade in pretty glass pitchers. When I find her she will teach me to cook, and we’ll bake cakes and frost them, cakes without occasions. Cakes just because we could.

  From the kitchen, I noticed that the door to my bedroom was open a half inch. I knew right away that something was wrong, and I waited a moment before pushing it in. Des sat on top of my comforter, her legs splayed, The Wisdom of Tarot between her thighs. An open bottle of wine rested on my nightstand.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “Don’t you have work?”

  “I called out today,” she said. “Figured I could use a day off.”

  Des had never, in my entire life, taken a day off. She didn’t get sick pay, didn’t get vacation. I shake these tits rain or shine, hell or high water, she always said. She liked me to think she was put out by this, but I knew it was a point of pride that she dragged herself into the club no matter how hungover she was.

  “Are you feeling okay?” My stomach dropped. The book, the money pressed in the back pages.

  “I feel great.” Please, just say it, do it, I thought. Scream, hit me. I’ll take it. Just don’t make me wait.

  “In fact, I came into a little extra money today, so I don’t even mind missing out on the pay.” She took a swig straight out of the wine bottle. “Great vintage. Want some?”

  “Des …”

  “Don’t you Des me.”

  She slammed the book shut, sat up, and Frisbeed it across the room. I thought I heard the spine crack when it hit the wall. I winced, like I’d been hit. “What’s the idea, here, Clara? Everything I do for you, and here you are, squirreling away all that money? You let me go to work every night at that shithole, while you’re sitting on hundreds of bucks? I’ve kept you fed. I’ve kept a roof over your head. So, what’s the big plan, huh? What do you think you’re doing? You ungrateful little sneak.”

  “I want to get out of here, Des! I don’t want to waste my whole life here. I don’t want to do any of this anymore. You sold
me to those guys and you knew what it would mean, what it would do to me. And then you went off and blew all of the cash!”

  “Are you saying I’ve wasted my life? I think what you’re saying is you don’t want to end up like me. Come on. I’m not like you. I don’t have that gift. But I know things—I see how you look at me. I know you think I ruined your life, okay?”

  “I want to find her, Des. My mother.” My voice sounded small, like a little girl making a wish on an eyelash.

  She took another swig and some of the wine dribbled down her chin. “She’s gone, okay? Anyone who could have been a mother to you is gone and doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “That’s not true. I’ll find her,” I said, knowing that my voice was uncertain, weak.

  “You never had a vision about your mother, huh? Limits to your talents, maybe?” There was a dangerous edge to her voice, a mean smile curling the corners of her lips, and I was looking directly at something that I had tried very hard, for a very long time, not to see. “You want to go to your mother? Fine, but there’s something you’ll want to know first.” She reached for a stack of papers that had been behind her on the bed. “Trust me, you’re not going to like what you see.”

  I shook my head. “You just want to keep me here with you so you don’t have to be miserable all by yourself. You want me to be unhappy, too.”

  “You want to talk unhappy? She’s crazy, Clara! Okay? Your mother. She has been for a long time. She had a gift but it was like she had … too much. It made her head go all wrong. It started before she even left Atlantic City. It got worse around the time you were born. I told her she needed to get help and instead she up and ran away. For a long time she was like you, and then she just went haywire. Or maybe she saw something that made her brain go bad. Either way, I can tell you that she needs more help than you or I do.” She’s wrong, I told myself. She’s just lying again. This is just one more of her tricks.

  “Here,” she said. “Have at it.” She pushed the letters against my chest, and I had to clutch at them so they wouldn’t fall. “I’ve been watching you lately, and something’s up with you. You twitch. You hear things that aren’t there. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you are just like her.”