Don't Try to Find Me: A Novel (30 page)

I heard his door open, and I assumed he was coming around to my side. I needed to open my eyes and push the door, hard, right into him. Send him flying. All I needed to do was time it right. In order to do that, I had to see.

OPEN YOUR EYES, MARLEY! OPEN YOUR STUPID EYES!

It was too late. He was lifting me again, fireman-style. That’s when I saw the ER sign. I nearly cried. I’d gambled on his humanity and won. I went “unconscious” again and let him leave me on the curb.

I waited an extra couple minutes after I heard his car pull away, just in case he was tricking me. Then I opened my eyes, for good. All the money I had left was in my pocket, and nothing else. I really was as light as a feather. I was on my own.

“There’s a girl lying out here!” someone shouted. He was a black man, in his late thirties, in scrubs. He seemed kind. “Are you okay? They’ll bring a stretcher.” He was looking at me like he’d seen me somewhere and couldn’t quite place me.

I got to my feet.

“It’s best not to move, if you’re hurt.”

“I’m not hurt,” I said. That was too simple a word for what I was. I stared after Brandon’s car. He’d become my captor, but it hadn’t started out that way.

He wanted me to be his family. He wanted a life with me. We were going to disappear together and start over. For some reason, when he said in the car that he was planning to tell me the truth someday, I believed him. Because he was talking to himself, because he was talking to someone who he thought couldn’t hear him.

Unless he knew I was faking the whole time and dropped me off anyway? Or figured it out en route and STILL let me go?

I wanted to think that, to see good in him. I didn’t want to go from the normalest girl in the world to the wrongest. He was my first love, not some diabolical psycho.

Or he was both.

THE LIBRARY, FIVE BLOCKS
away from the ER, was a good place to regroup: cool and quiet, and I’ve always liked the smell of books. I was still stunned that my plan had worked but also scared that maybe it hadn’t. At any moment, Brandon could figure it out (unless he
already had) and show up. But finally, there were people around to hear me scream.

There were still the posters to consider. Anyone could recognize me. They could call the police and I’d be sent back to my parents. I was definitely not ready for that.

But for now, the library was a good place to sit and clear my head. A good place to get on a computer and check out Disappeared.com and plot the next chapter.

Instead, I was caught on FindMarley.com. It was only supposed to be for a minute, long enough to see what happened after the press conference. I kind of wanted to know what people were saying about me and about my family. If they were saying I was crazy, and my mom was guilty. If anything bad had happened to her.

I saw that she’d posted this video, and it was generating a lot of buzz. It was her talking directly to the camera—directly to me. It was apparently so involving that no one commented about my having seen a psychiatrist. When you think about it, that was pretty low on the list of revelations from the press conference.

I cast a glance around for Brandon. Nowhere in sight.

So I hooked up my earbuds and started the video. There was Mom, with messy hair and no makeup, looking like she’d never seen a webcam in her life. Looking nervous and twitchy. Like an addict, actually.

But she got better at it. She was telling me about her marriage and her anxiety and her mistakes—with specifics, about the pills and Dr. Michael. She was talking in a way I never thought she would. She admitted that she lied to me about being unhappy and about wanting to leave my dad. And the stuff about my dad, it sounded like he’s done some changing, too.

As I watched, I started to feel calmer, more grounded, like the way Dr. Michael used to help me feel. A few minutes went by before I even remembered to look around for Brandon.

Mom said she was proud of me for what I did in therapy, all my
hard work; I’d done what she hadn’t been able to do herself. She’d relied on pills instead. But she didn’t say anything about Dr. Michael and my needing help a second time. It made me wonder if she really doesn’t know. He might have kept it to himself. What did he call that? Protecting confidentiality.

Then she talked about herself as a teenager and about her “Teen Angst” playlist. At that point, I’d been in the library for a while, and I knew I should be taking off. I probably didn’t even have time to go on Disappeared.com.

I needed to get to the bus station. I’d take the first bus out of town and then switch to another. I needed to be untraceable. I wasn’t safe sitting in the library, even with Brandon’s hoodie covering my hair. The flyers were all over Durham. There was one on the bulletin board out front, and that guy outside the ER thought I looked familiar. Even if Brandon didn’t catch me, someone else could.

But I was transfixed by this woman purporting to be my mother, the one with matted hair and no makeup, no pretense, talking about her addiction to pills and men. She knew a whole lot of people could see this video and judge her. She knew that I might never see it. But she took the chance, for me.

I realized that the video was propaganda. I was supposed to see her being all honest, finally, and want to go home. I was supposed to get hopeful and think that she and my dad have been changed by this whole experience. I’m supposed to believe that they’re different now.

The thought of facing my parents and having to tell them what happened with Brandon, of facing a bazillion other people who now know all this intimate stuff about my whole family—it’s pretty overwhelming. It was enough to make me want to go to the bus station and buy the first ticket to anywhere. I hadn’t come up with my new name yet, but it would be a long bus ride to wherever.

I could do it. I could walk out of the library and start over. No Brandon, no parents. I wanted to do it.

But I also wanted to keep watching the video. It was like my
mother was hypnotizing me. I was sitting there, having this internal battle, and then “To Be in Your Eyes” came on. My mother talked over it for a little bit, some ramble about how her mother hated that the band was named the Church (“Why not the Synagogue?”). Then she closed her eyes and she sang along, sang some of my favorite lines: “So I’m waiting, contemplating / Relocating a faded image in my thoughts / But the memories are like clouds / Try so hard / But they never can be caught.”

When she opened her eyes, there were tears in them. She said, “That’s what I’m so afraid of, Marley, that you’ll never come back, and the memories will be more and more like clouds, and you’ll really disappear. You’ll be lost to me forever.”

I was not going to cry. She’s my mother. She’s supposed to miss me. It’s supposed to kill her that I’m gone; that’s her punishment for being the one Dr. Michael chose.

But I’ve had this feeling like maybe Dr. Michael wasn’t all I made him out to be. Sure, he helped me. But that doesn’t mean he’s perfect. He’s the one who decided, while I was sitting in his office, to talk about insurance payments. My mom had nothing to do with that.

She started talking about my dad again (she was looping around a lot, it’s like how I have trouble writing in a straight line). She said that she really wants me to come home and “see him in a different light.” I was thinking, Hey, lady, I’m just starting to see YOU in a different light, don’t get ahead of yourself.

Then she said, “Your father has his faults, but he’s no narcissist.” If I was a dog, my ears would have pricked up. “What I mean by that is, a person who needs other people to see him in a positive way because underneath he’s fragile. Someone who doesn’t really care about other people’s feelings, who needs to be admired in order to feel superior.”

I’m practically mouthing it along with her. I remember it so well, when Dr. Michael told me, “Your father can’t help it, the way he is. It’s like a disease. It’s called narcissism.” And I asked, “What’s
narcissism?” He told me that same definition. He also said that narcissists can’t change. A few sessions later, I said, “What’s the point in trying to fix things with my dad if he can’t ever change?” and Dr. Michael answered, “Exactly.”

If Mom’s right, and Dad isn’t really a narcissist, or if he WAS a narcissist who actually CHANGED . . .

I’m getting this weird feeling like Dr. Michael might have manipulated both of us, my mom and me. He turned us against my dad. If that’s true, then I don’t need to be so angry at my mother anymore. Or at my father. It would mean Mom and I are in this together, and Dad is actually a victim himself.

I’m not sure about any of this, by the way. But that’s when I decided to watch the rest of the video, no matter how long it was.

Sure, some part of me knew that I was sealing my fate. There were too many flyers, and Brandon is no idiot, and if I didn’t go soon I’d never make it, there would never be a new life. I wasn’t even surprised when an officer approached. “Are you—?” he asked.

“I’m Marley.” I stood up. “And I’m not ready to go home.”

Hopefully, my mom still knows opposite-speak when she hears it.

THE LAST TWENTY-FOUR HOURS
are nothing I could have foreseen. Marley is in the car with us, driving back from the airport, and I keep turning around to look at her, fearing it’s a dream. It’s all so unreal, even though it’s also the most normal thing in the world: Paul driving, me in the passenger seat, Marley in the back. We’ve been traveling this way her whole life, but she’s never seemed like a stranger before. I might seem foreign to her, too, since all the revelations through the media and in my video.

That’s the amazing thing. Well, one of them. She watched my video. My yammering and DJ-ing kept her in the library long enough for someone to recognize her and call the police. I held her interest. That is a ceaseless source of amazement for me.

I’m not sure she wants to be here. She told the officer that she wasn’t ready to come home. I’m hoping that’s opposite-speak, but I haven’t had the courage to ask.

The police in Durham called Strickland, who came out to the house to tell us in person. He even apologized to me, and shockingly, it didn’t seem like an order from above. He seemed genuinely contrite. He said that since I had a legal prescription for my medications, and since I “have an anxiety disorder,” there wouldn’t be any charges. As for what’ll happen to Michael, that’s out of his jurisdiction.

What he could say was that Marley was at the police station in
Durham, waiting for us. We caught the first plane out. I was overjoyed at the thought of seeing her, and so terrified that she would disappear again or tell us that she hated us that I had to take an Ativan. But only one. It’s baby steps.

In the police station, she seemed subdued. There was hugging, but all the force came from me. She was limp in my arms, visibly shaken. Her boyfriend had been caught, and he was far from a boy. He was a twenty-eight-year-old man named Brandon Guillory, and he’d been convicted of several assaults and accused of a prior rape—forcible, rather than statutory—but the charges got dropped. How much of this had she already known when she ran away from us, to him? She wasn’t talking.

By the time Paul and I arrived, Brandon was already in police custody. He hadn’t been hard to find: He’d driven a few hours to some beach town, then paid for a motel with a credit card and was there when the police showed up. “Almost like he was waiting for us,” the officer said, shaking his head. “Isn’t there a TV show,
World’s Dumbest Criminals
?” Apparently, Brandon said that he and Marley were in love and that she’d moved in with him voluntarily. It had all been consensual, he claimed. It was still illegal, given her age, and charges were pending.

Marley hadn’t contradicted his story, had no injuries or bruises, refused medical attention, and denied the need for a rape kit, but it felt to the police (and to us) like there was something more. We were given the detective’s card and told that we could contact him anytime with “further information.”

His eyes lingered on Marley when he said it, but she was staring at the floor. I noticed that there was a patch of skin near her mouth that seemed red and irritated, and when I reached out to touch it, she jerked her head back. What did Brandon do to her, really? It was hard to imagine that she’d just gotten up and walked away, like she said. If that was true, why would he have taken off for a motel?

Marley hasn’t seemed like herself, but then, I don’t really know
who that is. I want to ask her why she left and if I have to worry that she’ll leave again. I won’t sleep tonight. I’ll be listening to every creak (and there are many, in our house), wondering if that’s her on the stairs, headed for who knows where. I think they’ve tightened up at the local bus station in response to all the hoopla, but if she’s really determined, that won’t be enough to stop her. If you want something bad enough, there’s always a way. We need to give her a reason to stay.

But we have to give her space, too. Paul feels similarly. We talked about it on the plane to North Carolina. Really talked, as in, a two-way exchange of ideas. He was trying hard not to bulldoze his every thought. He’d catch himself, and then we’d smile at each other awkwardly. We were on a first date to get our fourteen-year-old runaway daughter. Life has become incredibly strange. And wondrous. And terrifying.

Since we picked Marley up at the police station, we’ve been trying to sit back and follow her lead. That meant silence on the plane ride back (most of the time, she was asleep with her head against the window) and silence on the car ride from the airport. It meant holding back the flood of questions that she clearly wasn’t prepared to answer.

I can tell that something’s very wrong. She made little noises and whimpers while she was asleep, and when she woke up, it was almost like a mini-seizure: body convulsed, pupils darting. She didn’t relax again for the rest of the plane ride. It was like she expected someone to turn up (Brandon?) and she needed to be on high alert. “We’re right here,” I said, by way of comfort. “And he’s in jail.” She nodded, but her spine stayed ramrod straight until we landed.

There were a ton of news vans camped out in front of our house and more correspondents than I’d ever seen, pushing microphones in all of our faces. To his credit, Paul didn’t say anything, not even a “No comment.” He was only interested in shielding Marley and getting her inside the house as quickly as possible. Our little family, that’s all that matters. The rest can wait.

But now that we’re inside the house, there’s more silence. “We don’t have a lot to eat,” I tell Marley. “Just a lot of frozen Trader Joe’s stuff. You like their enchiladas, right?” I feel like I don’t even know something as basic as what she likes to eat. She might have become a vegetarian. There’s missing information, and then there are the hidden trapdoors. Whatever I did before, I don’t want to do it again, but how can I avoid it unless she tells me? All I can do is try to be inoffensive, but maybe that’s what got me into this.

I’m so scared of her. I’m scared of the kind of girl that fell in love with Brandon (whose daughter is that?), and I’m scared of what she might have done with him willingly and unwillingly. My gut tells me she didn’t just walk away; she had to run away from him, too, in the end. I don’t know how all that’s changed her.

There’s nothing in her countenance that suggests she understands what she’s put us through or that she’s sorry. But she doesn’t seem defiant, either. It’s like she’s wilted.

I should only feel grateful that she’s alive and here with us, and I do feel those things. But yesterday, I was a suspect. I was interrogated. I’ve been stripped bare and flogged on TV and the Internet, all to arrive at this moment. I don’t want to go to the grocery store, or back to work, because of how everyone will look at me. Sure, they know now that I didn’t kill my daughter, but they think I’m a pill-popping adulteress. And a bad mother. Because if you’re a good mother, your little girl doesn’t run away. Even I feel that way about me.

Marley is eating a banana in enormous bites. Leaning against the kitchen island, the copper pots dancing above her head like wind chimes, she sure looks like my daughter. She’s in a hoodie I don’t recognize (Brandon’s?) but she’s got one of her button-downs underneath and her Ugg boots. Her hair’s the same. She might be a little thinner.

“You’re staring at me,” she says. She doesn’t sound annoyed. It’s more of an observation.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” I say.

She stuffs the last quarter of the banana in her mouth. It’s a grotesque and beautiful sight. “I really want to take a bath. Is that okay?”

It’s not the kind of thing I’d expect her to ask permission for. It makes me wonder for the hundredth time what went on with Brandon. “Sure.”

I feel like we should be having a deeper, more meaningful discussion in light of what I said in the video and what I’ve gleaned about her and Brandon. But I’m back to being taciturn. I’m probably even more so because I have to be careful not to upset her. She’s like this skittish animal that could bolt at any time. We can’t keep her cage door locked, much as we’d like to. No one can live like that for any length of time.

How will we live? That’s the real question. I feel like I’m in a state of suspended animation. I’m waiting for something to happen. For over three weeks, I was waiting for her. Now what?

Paul is upstairs, sitting on our bed, updating all the different sites with the good news, thanking everyone for their help and support. I shut the door behind me and sit on the bed facing him. “How long are you going to leave everything up?” I whisper, not wanting Marley to overhear. I’d like the pages and sites gone as soon as possible, but then, they’re not my babies.

“Long enough for everyone to eat their words about you.”

“That’s sweet, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

“Why not? Marley’s home. Obviously you didn’t have anything to do with her leaving.”

I tilt my head, a touch incredulous. “I didn’t try to hurt her, but we don’t really know why she left. It might have to do with me. Or you.”

“Marley left to be with Brandon.” Paul infuses the name with maximal distaste, even at this low volume. “That’s the story here.”

“It’s never just one reason.”

“Sometimes there’s only one reason that matters. You can make yourself crazy trying to sort the motivations of a fourteen-year-old.”

This is normally where I’d bail on the conversation. He bugs me with his pragmatic dismissiveness, and I walk away. Instead, I force myself to say, “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Insult Marley and me.”

“How did I do that?”

If he has to ask, he’ll never know, right? This is never going to work. He’ll never change.

“You think there’s more to it than just Brandon,” Paul says slowly, like he’s thinking aloud on an oral exam, “and I was telling you you’re wrong. I was telling you Marley can only have one reason when you think she’s more complicated.”

I smile. “You got it.”

“I still need work on my listening skills. But I’m a quick learner.”

“We need to get her a new therapist, don’t you think? She needs to talk to someone about what really happened with Brandon.”

He nods immediately as he shuts the laptop. Another sign of growth. He wasn’t a fan of therapy even before Dr. Michael came along.

“I was standing there in the kitchen,” I say, “and I had no idea what to say to her. Just like always. And it’s not because she’s so surly or angry like other parents describe their teenagers. It’s worse than that. I have no clue what she’s thinking. She had a relationship with Brandon for months, and never said anything, and then she took off. I can’t read her.”

“So when she’s done with her bath, go knock on her door and tell her that.”

Paul’s phone rings, and he grabs for it. “Hello,” he says. “Yes, this is Paul Willits . . . Yes, Marley’s home . . . No, we won’t be doing any interviews. No press at all . . . No, that was just to bring her home. She’s home now . . . No, we don’t need that . . . No . . . Thank you for getting the word out, but we need to go back to our lives. No . . . No . . .”

My phone’s been ringing a lot, too. None of the calls are Michael. I’ve blocked him. But first, I let him know that if he ever shows up here again, I’ll be calling the police. He’s got enough trouble with the law as it is. He’s being investigated for prescribing me addictive medications. I still haven’t decided on my level of cooperation. I need some time to weigh out his relative good versus harm for my family and me. It’s no easy equation. Trigonometry, at least, when I’m barely up for arithmetic.

“Have a good night,” Paul tells the reporter. He hangs up and smiles at me. Then he turns the phone off. “It’s going to be this way for a while. Candace said they’ll come to our door and to Marley’s school. They’ll want to know what she was doing with a convicted felon.”

“I want to know that, too.”

“We did all this to find her, and now we need to protect her from the fallout.” Does a small part of him wish he hadn’t done it?

“What are people going to say about us now? Have you thought about what it’ll be like when you go back to work?”

“It’ll be Wednesday.”

Can it really be that simple for him? Well, maybe I can try to learn from him, too.

I hear the water draining from the tub and the bathroom door opening. I find myself listening to make sure her feet aren’t on the stairs, that they’re padding down the hall. No, I won’t sleep tonight. I’ll have to get rid of my pills, because I can feel their allure. I’ll need a therapist myself, maybe. Definitely.

I changed her diapers; I read her stories; I cleaned up her skinned knees. We’ve had thousands of conversations. What’s one more?

I knock on her door, stomach knotted.

“Yeah?” she says from behind the door.

“Can I come in?”

“I’m pretty tired.”

I should respect that. She’s telling me no, she doesn’t want to talk.
But I have needs, too. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight unless we talk a little.”

A long pause, and then she opens the door. The lights are blazing behind her. “What do you want to talk about?”

“What you’ve been through.”

“I don’t think I can talk about that.”

“Then what I’ve been through.”

She steps aside to let me in. She gets under the covers of her bed, leaning against the headboard. Her hair dampens her white nightgown. She hasn’t worn that nightgown in a long time. I’ve always thought it makes her look like a Victorian heroine. There are no bruises visible on her face or on her collarbone. I checked at the station but can’t resist checking again.

I’m standing, because she hasn’t invited me to sit.

“You’re staring again,” she says.

“You look pretty in that nightgown.”

“Thanks.”

“Would it be okay if I sat on the bed?” I ask.

She nods.

I take a seat. I want so badly to reach out and brush her wet hair back from her forehead. To bring her soup. To take care of her like when she’s sick. I want to erase years of mistakes and missed opportunities. I want to make it all right with one conversation. It needs to be a conversation that cements that everything will be different now, that we’ll all go forward and become some other family, the kind where the daughter stays put until college.