Amends: A Love Story (10 page)

My eyes swell and burn with unshed tears. I
decide they could use a rest, even without the added bonus of
unconsciousness. I stretch out on the marble bench. It's
uncomfortable, but not as bad you'd expect. I close my eyes, but
moments later I hear soft footsteps. I keep my eyes screwed shut
and hope it's just another mourner passing by.

No such luck. The gate squeaks, a shadow
falls over my face, and I know its sweetly perfumed owner has come
for me.

/////////////////////////

Ember looks down at me with a small, hopeful
smile. Her wispy blonde hair floats in the breeze, surrounding her
face like a halo. She's wearing a short black dress that shows off
her strong, supple dancer's legs. I wonder what she wearing under
her dress, and a wave of self-loathing washes over me.

I sit up and take her hand. "Ember, this is
my mother's tomb."

She squeezes in next to me and rubs my back.
"I know. I want to be here for you now, like I couldn't be at your
mom's funeral. I want to be the kind of girlfriend you
deserve."

"I know, Ember," I say, resisting the urge to
gather her to me. "But you can't change what happened. Neither of
us can. I think we both need to move on."

She takes my hand and places it on her bare
thigh. Her skin is tan, warm, and perfectly smooth. "I don't think
you want to move on."

I feel myself stir and remind myself that I'm
at my mother's tomb, for God's sake. "You're a beautiful girl. Of
course, I want you, but..."

She cuts me off before I can say anything
else. "Then what's the problem?"

"You just showed up at my mother's tomb, and
now you're acting like you want to hook up right here. To be
honest, it's a little creepy." When her hand flies up to cover her
face, I add, "This isn't who you are, Em. You've got to stop
it."

"So, I guess that's it then?" she asks,
sniffling.

"Yes," I say, cautiously. "I think it's for
the best."

"Friends?" She tilts her head and parts her
plump, pink lips, waiting to be kissed.

"Yes." I give her a chaste peck on the cheek.
"C'mon, let me walk you back to your car."

/////////////////////////

I'm driving alongside Lake Everclear, feeling
like a zombie. I should feel light and free. After all, I finally
ended things with Ember, and she hasn't texted me once since we
left the cemetery and went our separate ways. But the silence seems
vast and empty.

I try to lose myself in the feel of the road.
I'm driving one of Dad's old Porsche Boxters, and it responds
beautifully to even the lightest touch. I get so absorbed in the
simple act of driving that I cruise right past the exit for Jasper
Heights.

I take the next exit and find myself passing
through Triple Marsh, the sad, rundown town where Laura Dormer and
her husband lived and where, as far as I know, Amity Dormer still
lives. I ask my GPS to direct me back to the highway. It quickly
calculates a route and pops it onto the display screen. A breathy,
feminine voice tells me to make a U-turn, when I notice a point on
the map labeled Forever Acres cemetery.

I think back to all the Internet coverage I
read on Laura Dormer and the accident. Forever Acres sounds
familiar. I'm almost sure that's where Laura and her husband are
buried. Then I get what is almost certainly a stupid idea. I'm
going to go pay my respects to the woman I killed.

/////////////////////////

Forever Acres is surprisingly modern for a
cemetery—especially one in Triple Marsh. A simple touch-screen
kiosk allows me to look up plots by name. It takes me just a few
seconds to locate Laura and Craig Dormer and print out a snazzy
little map to their adjoining graves.

Following the map, I make my way down a
narrow path through a dizzying array of headstones. The dead are
much more densely packed here than they are in Jasper Heights. If
people actually visited these graves with any frequency, mourners
would have to stand sideways to avoid bumping each other's
elbows.

But people rarely visit their dead. The
cemetery is almost empty. As I move along the path, I notice signs
of neglect. Weeds grow between the stepping stones. The grass is a
couple of inches too long. I glance down at the map. I should be
getting close to the Dormers' plots. When I look up, I see a tall
girl in a black T-shirt and jeans, standing between two newly
filled graves.

I approach slowly and cautiously, wondering
if I've fallen into one of my Ambien dreams. As I get closer, I
realize it's her. Amity. The girl of my dreams and my nightmares.
Her arms are crossed in front of her chest, and her shoulders are
slightly hunched. She's even thinner than I'd imagined, all sharp
bones and hard angles.

I'm about to turn and leave—I don't want to
interrupt her private grief with my guilty fixation—when she cocks
her head and waves. I look around, wondering if she could be
beckoning to someone else, but I'm the only one here.

Heart skittering in my chest, I walk towards
her. She meets me half way.

"Hi," she says, blushing prettily. "I didn't
mean to disturb you. It's just that I never see any other young
people here. I'm Amity." She sticks out her long, bony hand. I
shake it firmly.

"I'm Laird." My stomach makes a slow,
sickening roll. I have no idea if she saw the police report or if
someone told her that I, Laird Conroy, was the other driver in the
accident that killed her mother. I search her face for signs of
recognition—or hatred—and see nothing but gentle interest.

She smiles, and her face opens up like a
freshly bloomed sunflower. "Nice to meet you. I'm here for my
parents. Both of them. Car wreck and, uh, alcohol poisoning. I
guess I'm an orphan. What about you? Who are you here for?"

What I say next is both a lie and the truth.
"My mom. She died about a month ago. I visited her grave, and then
I needed to take a walk."

She nods. "I know what you mean. A month
isn't very long. I'm not used to coming here. I try to talk to
them—tell them about my life—but it feels weird."

Her blue eyes glisten. I open my mouth to say
something comforting, but my throat constricts. Before I can stop
myself, I'm racked with rough, bone-shaking sobs. I expect Amity to
turn away, but she doesn't. Instead, she encircles me with her
slender arms as if I'm made of eggshells. She holds me tenderly and
strokes my hair while I bark and gasp and probably ruin her T-shirt
with tears and snot. I breathe in her scent—a mixture of sandalwood
and smoke—and it feels like she's a part of me.

When I'm finally quiet and spent, she pulls
away ever so slowly. She pulls a pack of Marlboro Reds from her
back pocket. "Want one?"

Instead of saying no thanks, I find myself
reaching out my hand. I want to share something tangible with her,
even if it is just a cancer stick. She pulls out a silver Zippo and
lights our cigarettes. She takes small, dainty puffs. I hold the
smoke in my lungs until they ache, then exhale long, wild
plumes.

When we're done, she takes our butts and
places them in an empty mint tin. We stand silently, side by side,
for a long while. The sunlight slowly fades, and the gravestones
cast longer and longer shadows. When I reach for her hand, she's
suddenly shy. She lets her hair hang into her face, obscuring her
big, bright eyes.

"I've got to go," she says. "I'm really sorry
about your mom."

And then she walks away, a sorrowful angel
with a hitch in her stride.

Book 2: The aftermath

Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the
Earth, like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your
bones.

–Jeffrey McDaniel

Chapter 11: Amity

Almost three years later, Gran is still
driving Dad's old pickup. Actually, it suits her. She could be a
rancher on her way to inspect a shipment of cattle with her sharp,
unwavering eyes. She sniffs the air and wrinkles her nose, as if
she smells something distasteful.

"Your mother would be so disappointed," she
grumbles.

"What?" I ask all innocence, although I know
exactly what she's talking about. We have the same conversation
almost every morning.

"The smoking," she harrumphs."Just because I
don't see you doing it doesn't mean I can't smell it on you. Your
grandfather smoked, and you know where it got him?"

"Dying in a nursing home on a respirator," I
finish.

"Your mother was a nurse. She'd be appalled.
You're leaving for that fancy college next week. Why don't you quit
now?"

I don't think Gran ever knew that Mom was a
secret smoker. I wonder if I'm hanging onto the smoking because
it's a link to her. Or maybe it's because the girls at work didn't
accept me until I began sharing their vice. I let Gran's question
hang in the air. I know I should quit, but I'm just not ready.

Gran doesn't give up easily, though. "You
didn't start smoking until you got that awful job. Maybe if you got
a better job—a decent job—you wouldn't have to smoke."

I groan. "That awful job as you call it is
the only reason I can afford to transfer to Adams College. It also
paid for your air conditioning this summer."

Gran sniffs. "You don't need to pay for my
air conditioning any more, girl. That's why I took that damn job as
a cashier at BigMart. It's real, honest work. You don't see me
shaking my bare bottom for the whole town to see."

Gran tries to maintain a stern expression;
she succeeds for all of a nanosecond. We both dissolve into
hysterical laughter. Then Gran grows quiet. I can tell she's
thinking of Mom.

"I know your generation sees things
differently," she says. "Women can do whatever they want with their
bodies, and mostly that's great. But I think your mother would be
very sad to see you dancing for men like a wind-up toy. She'd want
you to do something with your mind."

"Don't worry, Gran. I'm going to graduate
from Adams College, get into to medical school, and become an
amazing pediatrician. Maybe even a pediatric surgeon. I'm taking a
work study job at Adams. I won't be stripping anymore." Unless, I
think, we really desperately need the money.

"I hope not," says Gran as
she makes a sharp right at a neon sign that reads
The Kat Club: Exclusive entertainment for fine
gentlemen
. I scan the parking lot for
Ethan's car—an ancient red Beemer. I'm relieved that I don't see it
anywhere. He's been sort of stalking me ever since I stopped seeing
him last year, when he got engaged to his girlfriend. Once he
figured out I was serious about giving him up cold turkey, he came
a little unhinged. He still sends me ten or so texts every day. I'm
proud to say I ignore them all.

What worries me more is that, every once in a
while, he shows up at the club and follows me around, offering to
take my virginity in a loud, booming voice until the bouncers haul
him away. The only upside to his performance is that it usually
triples my tips. Men are intrigued by the idea of a virgin
stripper. I guess it's the old Madonna whore complex with a few new
lyrics thrown in.

Gran sees me craning my neck and frowns. I
told her a little about Ethan, just in case he shows up at our
apartment. Ever since then, she's insisted on driving me to and
from work. She pulls up as close as she can to the service
entrance. "Be careful," she says, kissing me on the cheek. "I'm so
glad you'll be starting school next week and getting away from this
place."

"Goodbye Gran. I l-l-love you." I stammer for
the first time in weeks.

I hope it isn't some kind of omen.

/////////////////////////

When the deejay asks for
Tawny to come out and show her claws, I stalk down the runway to
the damaged-girl ballad
Closer
by Nine Inch Nails. I feel the heat of male desire
on my bare skin and smile like a hungry cat. Yes, I'm ashamed to
admit it, but I sort of like stripping. I love the freedom of
dancing without a limp and the power I have over the
audience.

I even love my stripper name. Tawny, my alter
ego, is a leopard goddess with sinuous limbs and an insatiable need
to be worshipped. I imagine men crawling to her fire-lit temple as
I gyrate around the stage and flirt with the pole, whipping the
audience into a frenzy. I really hope Ethan isn't in out there. He
gets a little extra crazy whenever he sees my act, which is ironic
since he's the one who pushed me to work at the Kat Club in the
first place.

Now I embrace the pole as if it were my
boyfriend. I wrap my arms and legs around it and move my hips in a
figure eight. I can practically hear the customers breathing as one
huge, horny collective organism. When I finally leap and execute a
one-legged spin-and-drop, green bills pop up like crocuses in the
spring. I stuff the moist bills—the customers' sweaty
offerings—into my garter, do a couple more tricks, and strut off
the stage.

The girls greet me in the dressing room with
smiles and friendly catcalls. At first, they didn't know what to
make of me—a fresh-faced honor student with a tentative way of
speaking. We finally got to know each other over cigarettes in the
alleyway behind the bar. Now they call me College Girl, which I
like much better than Amityville Horror.

As I'm touching up my makeup, Syndy—a tiny
woman of twenty-five in a Catholic school girl outfit—taps me
lightly on the shoulder.

"We know you're leaving for school soon. The
girls and I wanted to give you this." She smiles, revealing a small
gap between two white front teeth, and holds out an envelope. "It's
a going away present."

I open it and stammer my heartfelt thanks.
Inside is the one thing every stripper wants and needs: a thick wad
of cash.

/////////////////////////

For me, the worst part of being a stripper
isn't taking my clothes off. It's interacting with the customers
and struggling not to stammer while making the very smallest of
small talk. In a lot of ways, the onstage show is just an
advertisement for my charms. The most profitable part of my job—for
me and the club—is chatting up the customers and encouraging them
to buy me overpriced drinks.