Lullaby for the Rain Girl (13 page)

The room grew dark.

“What do you want to do now?” he asked finally.

She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

“We could…” He felt suddenly nervous, awkward. “I don’t know. Play some music or something. Watch TV.”

She looked at him. “If you have things you need to be doing, Mitchell, don’t mind me. Really.”

He shook his head. “I don’t have anything to do.” He looked out at the dropping snow. “Everything’s closed, anyway. The weather. They closed the government.”

“Is it bad?”

“It’s pretty bad.” For the first time since he came in he remembered his knee. He leaned down, rubbed it. “I took a fall. Hurt like hell.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

“I’m okay.”

“Let me see it.”

“No, really,” he said. “I’m okay.”

“Still. I told you, I have Red Cross training.”

He looked at her, then moved to the sofa and sat down. He pulled up the leg of his pants, discovered to his surprise that it looked nasty indeed: it was badly scraped, bleeding and bruised.

“Oh, gosh,” she said. “Don’t worry. I can fix it. Do you have a first-aid kit?”

He shrugged. “There’s some stuff under the bathroom sink. I can—”

“No,” she said, standing, “you’ve done enough. Just wait.” She moved to the bathroom and he heard her rummaging around under the sink. At last she returned, with numerous items in her hands. “You’re well-stocked,” she said. “That’s good. Most people aren’t.” She sat next to him again. “Now let me see that knee.”

He stretched it across her lap and she went to work with a towel soaked in warm water, soap, iodine, bandages. In a few minutes it was done.

“Good as new,” she smiled, patting his calf.

He nodded, moving to pull down his pant leg again. “Thanks,” he said. “Just—um, thanks.”

“Jane.”

He glanced at her, smiled and sighed. “I
know
. Jane Hooper.”

“Well, then.”

The room grew black. The wind picked up and made thin whistling sounds against the windowpanes, blew the snow in crazy patterns through the sky. After a while she stood, put away the first-aid things, and came back with a blanket from the bed.

“Is it all right?” she asked. “I thought maybe we could watch TV together. If you don’t want to, that’s okay.”

“No, it’s fine.” He reached for the remote as she dropped down next to him and arranged the blanket over them both. “What do you want to watch?”

“I don’t know. Just flip around.”

He did. She said nothing except when he came across news broadcasts: “No, no news,” she said. “Nothing
new.”

At last he flipped onto a station that was running an old Yogi Bear cartoon.

“Oh, that’s it!” she cried delightedly. “Can we watch it? Please?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

He sat silently as she giggled and chuckled at the antics of Yogi, Boo-Boo, and the Ranger. When that was done, Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd came on; then the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. As she watched, totally engrossed, he sat with a feeling of desolation, emptiness. This was what his life had come to, watching cartoons with a girl he didn’t like, a girl he found unattractive and annoying, a girl who was…But he tried not to think of that, tried not to think of what the future might bring. She snuggled against him and he put his arm around her. He wondered if she would ever watch a cartoon again, if she would ever watch anything again. He wondered what would happen, or could.

Later they agreed to sleep together. They undressed in the dark, turning away from each other like uneasy strangers, and stayed far apart in the bed. He drifted into a shallow doze, but in the middle of the night he awoke suddenly. His head was filled with her odor of death, of decay.

He escaped to his study, slept instead on the small fold out bed he had there.

# # #

“I’m sorry, Mitchell,” she said the next morning.

“It’s not your fault.”

“I guess I’d better leave now.”

Yes, he thought, for God’s sake yes. But he said: “Where would you go?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. But there must be some place. I feel it. There’s
some
place. Somewhere.”

He looked at her. Her cheeks had grown thinner, her lips parched and cracked. Black blotches had begun to appear on her face.

“I’m falling apart,” she said. “Literally. I don’t know how much longer I can—I don’t know what’s—”

She stood suddenly, moved toward his study. He heard her collapse onto the fold out bed. He followed her in.

“It’s not fair that I take your bed,” she said. “I’ll stay in here.”

“You don’t have to.”

“No, it’s okay. I don’t want to be a bother. I’ll—I want to leave. It’s just that I feel kind of weak right now.”

“It’s okay. Whatever.”

“Mitchell?”

“Yes.”

“Would you sit beside me for a while?” Her voice was thin, weak.

“Okay.” He moved to the bed, sat gingerly on its edge. Though it was morning, the skies were a murk-heavy gray and the room was all but dark.

“I enjoyed watching cartoons with you last night,” she whispered.

“Good.”

“They were the same ones I used to watch when I was little. The exact same ones. I actually remembered some of the stories.”

“That’s good.”

“It made me feel like a little kid again.”

“Good.”

“Mitchell?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Do you like me?”

He looked at her. She had drawn a blanket up to her chin. He could see her thin, bony fingers grasping at the top of it.

“Sure.”

“Do you?”

He shrugged. “I guess.”

“People don’t,” she said quietly. “They never have. I never had friends. Or I would have them for a while and then they would just stop seeing me, or they would say something nasty about me behind my back. You know how girls are. Anyway, they never lasted. The friendships. They always ended. Do you know,” she said, curiously, as if it had just occurred to her, “that I don’t know a single person from high school anymore? Or grade school? Or college? I don’t know where anybody is. Nobody has ever tried to stay in touch with me.”

“Maybe they lost track of you,” he said.

“I wrote some of them,” she said. “Years ago. Sent them letters. Christmas cards. Nobody ever answered.”

“Maybe you had the wrong addresses.”

“They were never returned to me.”

They sat in silence for a time.

“No, they didn’t like me,” she said. “It’s always been that way. Guys have never liked me either. I would always be the last one sitting at any dance or anything. Or at a bar. Like the other night. I was the last one. That’s why you decided to talk to me.”

He was going to say,
Oh, come on, no it wasn’t,
but he knew it was true.

“I’ve never had a boyfriend,” she whispered. “I’m twenty-six and I’ve never had a boyfriend. I never understood it. I’m not ugly.”

“No,” he agreed, “you’re not ugly.”

“I’m not obnoxious, or rude.”

“No.”

“But I’ve never had a boyfriend. The only reason I know any men at all is because I’m willing to—to make love. Just to…spend some time with a man. That’s why I do it.”

He could think of no response.

“It’s the same with jobs,” she said. “I have a degree. I’m good at what I do. But again and again, when there’s a cutback, I’m the first to go. And my rent…? I’ve seen the landlord let other people slide for months. But the minute I fell behind…”

Silence.

“Know what I think?” she asked finally, her voice little more than a whisper. “I think that there are some people who just aren’t liked. At all. Who are…cursed, somehow. Who make other people uncomfortable no matter what they do. They don’t know why. I don’t know why. I’ve tried everything. Clubs, different kinds of groups, churches. When I hang back and stay quiet, people think I’m boring or stuck-up. But when I come on all friendly and bubbly they think I’m trying too hard. They make fun of me either way. Why do they do that?”

He stared at his hands. “I don’t know. You’re right. It’s not your fault. It’s something about you.”

“I did well in school,” she said. “But it didn’t make any difference.”

“No.”

“I was just this…girl that nobody liked.”

He nodded.

“I don’t think…I don't think that God likes me either,” she said.

He looked at her.

“But at least you feel sorry for me, Mitchell,” she said. “That’s something.”

He did not answer. Finally he stood and left the room.

# # #

He saw her rarely after that. She stayed in the study, making no sound whatsoever other than when she turned over in the bed. Occasionally he would look in, ask, “Do you need anything?”

She would always shake her head, say, “No, I’m okay.”

She grew rapidly weaker. Once he stepped into the room, looked closely at her. Her face was falling in on itself, turning black. Her eyes had turned glassy, lifeless. And yet she could still move, still speak in a murmur.

“Look,” she said to him, almost inaudibly. “My hair is falling out.” She pulled a small bunch from her head. Her skin seemed to come apart at the spot where she pulled, crumbling like cheese.

Days passed. There was nowhere for him to go. The ice storm abated but snow continued to fall for days, piling atop the encrusted ice and making travel all but impossible. Most of the city remained closed. He would go out as far as the corner 7-Eleven for bread, orange juice, coffee, slipping along the sidewalk as he did so, quickly returning home. The door to the study was shut. He drank coffee, wasted time noodling around on the Internet, slept.

At times it was almost possible to forget that she was there. He would do his laundry, call work to see when the store would re-open. He e-mailed some old friends. He fixed the leaky faucet in the kitchen. There were times when his life felt almost normal.

One night he made his way to the nearest bar and after an hour or two struck up a conversation with a decent-looking girl, maybe about his age. She told him she worked as a secretary downtown, at the Federal Trade Commission. Blonde, short pixie hairstyle, cute enough. They had a few laughs over beers and when he asked her to come back to his place she said, “Sure,” as so many of them always had. He felt lightweight, airy as he walked with her back to the apartment, breathing in the frigid winter air. She giggled and nuzzled his neck as he unlocked the door and opened it. But when she stepped in she paused for just a moment before turning back in disgust, covering her nose and mouth and crying, “Oh my God, what is that
smell?”

For a moment he didn’t know what she was talking about. He didn’t even notice it now.

# # #

“I ruined your date,” she croaked brokenly.

“It’s all right,” he said from the door.

“Don’t come in. I don’t want you to see me like this…”

“I won’t.”

“But Mitchell, I…I
do
think there’s a place for me, somewhere. I believe that.”

“Okay.”

“I need to find it.”

“Okay.”

“Just—don’t hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“I know you didn’t ask for this. Please don’t hate me.”

“I don’t hate you, Jane. No one hates you.”

# # #

At last the store opened again. He left for work one morning just as he would on any other: he showered, dressed, made his lunch of tuna on wheat bread and an apple, stepped out into the hall and rode the elevator down. The day passed like any other day. He walked home tiredly through the winter darkness. But he hardly thought of Jane Hooper at all until he opened his front door and immediately sensed something different.

It was
cold.
Looking across the room, he realized that the windows were open wide. He rushed to close them, then recognized that they were open in the other rooms, too. He stepped quickly around, shutting them, until he came to the study. He hesitated and then stepped in. Heading straight for the window, he didn’t realize until he’d closed it that the fold out bed was empty.

“Jane?”

He stepped into each room, looked. Nothing. Finally he moved to the thermostat, saw that the heat had been turned off. He switched it on again.

“Jane?”

Then he saw the wet marks on the floor. They were not footprints. They were more like smears of black mud that trailed from the study to, he realized, the front door. He looked at them pensively. Then he opened the door and saw that they led to the elevator.

He turned back into the apartment again and saw that there was a piece of paper on the coffee table. He picked it up.

Dear Mitchell,
it read, in a shaky, haphazard hand,
thank you for everything. I’m sorry about the mess and the stink. I’ve opened the windows to try to let it air out. I found a big old coat in the back of your closet. I hope you don’t mind that I took it. It has a hood so people won’t see me. I have to go while I still can. I have to find the place where I belong. I’m sorry for everything. Please don’t hate me. Jane Hooper.