Misty (15 page)

“No. Someplace better. Daddy had told me where he kept the spare key to the apartment hidden just in case I ever was to come over and he and Ariel weren't there yet. It was behind a cabinet in his parking space under the building.

“We went to the apartment. Lloyd was very impressed with the place. He got into Daddy's liquor cabinet and I made us something to eat. We pretended like it was really our apartment and we were married. We watched television and began to get passionate. It was my idea for us to use Daddy's bedroom instead of mine. It just seemed. . .more of a risk, I guess. We made love and then I remade the bed. Both of us took showers. I gave Lloyd one of Daddy's robes to wear and we returned to the living room and curled up on the sofa, watching television again. We both fell asleep.

“Some time after midnight Daddy and Ariel came home and found us there.”

“You're kidding!” Star exclaimed.

“Wow!” Jade said.

Cat looked frightened for me.

“Daddy was furious, of course. He said some nasty things to Lloyd and I said some nastier things to him. Ariel made some small attempt to calm things down, but Daddy's fury turned on her and she retreated quickly.
Lloyd got dressed and left and Daddy called Mommy, waking her up to tell her what was going on. Of course, he blamed her.

“I didn't get much sleep. The next morning Daddy brought me home. Mommy was waiting in the living room. He hadn't been in the house since he had taken the picture of my room and was surprised at some of the changes, but this wasn't the time to talk about that. He described what he had found when he and Ariel had returned to his apartment.

“ ‘You lied to me,' Mommy said shaking her head like it was something she could never believe.

“ ‘Everybody lies in this house,' I snapped back at her.

“ ‘You watch your mouth,' Daddy yelled.

“ ‘You lied to me,' I retorted. ‘You said you weren't going to be home and that's why I couldn't spend the weekend with you.'

“He looked guilty, caught. He glanced at my mother and then turned back to me.

“ ‘My plans changed. That happens sometimes, Misty, but it doesn't give you the excuse to do what you did,' he said and then he returned to the familiar battleground with my mother. ‘Do you realize what she's up to these days, Gloria?'

“ ‘She's got the perfect model of morality to follow,' my mother said, glaring at him. ‘Look how you live. Look what she sees whenever she visits with you. What do you expect she'll turn into? What can I do?'

“They got into one of their worst battles and I went up to my room. At least for the moment, they were directing their venom at each other instead of me. After Daddy
left, Mommy came up to see me and asked me what I had been doing and how long I had been doing it.

“She acted very hurt. I was making a fool out of her, hurting her, making things more difficult for her. Everything was her, her, her. Daddy had done the same thing earlier, telling me how my behavior was only going to make things more difficult for him, him, him.

“Of course, Mommy wanted to know who the boy was. Who were his parents? Where did they live? That seemed to matter more than anything. I refused to tell her anything about Lloyd and she ended it by grounding me for a month. I was to come directly home after school every day and spend all my weekends at home. She forbade me from having phone calls again, but this time she surprised me by calling the phone company and having my line disconnected.

“I don't think I ever felt more miserable. Lloyd blamed himself. He told me he should have known better and expected it. Later that week, about Wednesday, I think, Mommy found out who my boyfriend was. Clara Weincoup's mother had told her. When I got home, she was waiting for me and went into a new rage about my slumming.

“How could I go around with someone like that? Didn't I have respect for myself?

“ ‘Maybe my boyfriend isn't rich and his parents don't live in a big, expensive house, but at least I can enjoy being a woman,' I shouted back at her, and she turned all red.

“She chased after me demanding to know exactly
what I had meant. She kept it up until finally, in a rage myself, I blurted out the things Daddy had told me at that first lunch when I asked him why they were getting divorced. She turned a shade paler than the dead leaves on Doctor Marlowe's oleander bushes out back. I thought she was going to faint. Her mouth opened and closed without a sound coming from it. I really got frightened. She had to take hold of the back of a chair to steady herself.

“Then, she just turned and walked out of the room. We never said anything more about it, but later I found out she had called her attorney who had called Daddy's attorney. There was a serious threat to go to the judge to end Daddy's visitation rights with me.

“Everything just seemed to be getting worse and worse. Early the following week, Lloyd got into a bad fight at school with another boy. When Mr. Levine tried to break it up, Lloyd hit him and he was expelled. I found out late that afternoon. Darlene couldn't wait to tell me.

“ ‘Your boyfriend is in big trouble,” she said and described what had happened at the gym. She and the others gloated. It seemed to prove they were right about me and Lloyd.

“But I said, ‘Lloyd was right about you! You're all a bunch of Beverly's. Go to hell!' I screamed at them.

“I ran away from them and after school, I went to Lloyd's mother's apartment, but no one was there. I was very depressed and disappointed. My phone was still disconnected. How would he call me? I was hoping he would come to my house, but all that day he didn't. I
tried calling him on my mother's phone when my mother wasn't watching, but there was no answer.

“I hated being in school the next day. I failed a math test. I hadn't even cracked open the book to study for it. The girls were talking about me constantly. I stayed in the bathroom the whole lunch period rather than sit in that cafeteria and be under their laughing eyes. I was inches away from cutting class and going to look for Lloyd. When the final bell rang, I shot out of the building and went to his apartment again. Again, I found no one there.

“My mother wasn't home when I got home. I sat in my room, brooding, when all of a sudden, I heard the sound of a motorcycle and looked out the window to see Lloyd pull into our driveway. He sat on his motorcycle and beeped the horn, and I ran out to him.

“ ‘Where have you been?' I cried throwing myself into his arms. ‘I went to your apartment two days in a row.'

“ ‘Just been riding around,' he said, ‘thinking. I stayed at a friend of mine's place in Encino and finally made a big decision,' he said.

“ ‘What decision?'

“ ‘I'm leaving California,' he told me and my heart fell.

“ ‘Leaving? Where are you going?' I asked.

“ ‘Anyplace away from here. I got a cousin in Seattle who owns a garage. I think I'll go up there and work for him awhile and just see how it goes.'

“ ‘What about your mother?'

“ ‘She practically threw me out of the house,' he said,
‘when she found out I was bein' thrown out of school. She said I'm too much trouble for her. She can't handle me anymore. It's making her old and sick.'

“ ‘My mother says the same thing about me,' I moaned.

“ ‘So . . . maybe you should come with me,' he said and I thought, why not?

“ ‘Maybe I will,' I said.

For a long moment, we just stared at each other and he could see in my eyes that I was really going to do it.

“ ‘Pack a really small bag,' he said without a beat. I hesitated one short moment and then ran into the house to stuff my backpack.

“That was the hardest part, deciding what I wanted to take with me. I mean there were some essential clothes to take and a pair of boots and a pair of shoes, but of all the things you own, of all the things you've been given, what would you choose if you could take only a very few things, and of course, nothing large or heavy?

“Suddenly nothing seemed as important as it had been. All the things my parents had given me were just things. There was one doll, my first real doll, the one I kept on the bed, a soft rag doll. I took that, but I didn't take any jewelry. I should have probably. We could have used the money if I sold it. I grabbed a toothbrush and a hairbrush and turned in circles trying to decide what else, what else mattered?

“Lloyd began to honk his horn. I scooped my leather jacket out of the closet, took one last look at my room, the room that had been my whole world for so much of
my life. These walls held all my secrets, had seen all my tears and heard me whisper all my fears.

“ ‘Good-bye,' I whispered and ran down the stairs. I didn't even look back and I didn't leave my mother a note or anything.

“I stepped out, slipped on my backpack and hurried to get behind Lloyd on the motorcycle. He turned his head and smiled at me and we took off. My heart was thumping so hard and fast, I was afraid I might faint and fall into the street. I wrapped my arms around him and held on for dear life. It was mostly cloudy and very breezy that day. The wind whipped through my hair and blasted my face, but I didn't think about the weather or anything. I really thought I was free, free of all the static, free of all the hate and pain. I dreamed I wouldn't write or call my parents for years and then, when I did, they could do nothing but accept what had happened and where I was.

“It wasn't exactly comfortable sitting on the back of that small motorcycle for hours and hours. We rode through a short rain shower and it got cooler fast. Finally, we stopped at a roadside restaurant for dinner and counted up the money we had together. I had scooped up all I had in my dresser drawer, but it wasn't much.

“Lloyd thought it was warm enough for us to spend the first night at least sleeping off the road. It was still quite an adventure for me, so I didn't mind cuddling up in his arms under a small bridge. We talked ourselves to sleep, making all sorts of plans. Maybe I was a fool, but I fell asleep thinking it was all possible. He would get
work; I would get work. We would be able to afford a small apartment and in time we would have enough to really live right. Finally, we were both free of all the phonies.

“ ‘There are no Beverlys where we're going,' Lloyd promised as we drifted into our private fantasies.

“It was colder than we had expected during the night. I kept waking and I couldn't get very comfortable. Both of us looked washed out the next morning. We found a small restaurant where I cleaned up and fixed my hair. We had a hot breakfast, which made us feel a lot better.

“By this time I imagined my mother was in some kind of a panic, enough of one to have called my father. But I also envisioned them blaming each other as usual and not really doing anything about it.

“Lloyd was worried about us not having enough money to make it to Seattle and get situated. As we started out that second day, our enthusiasm had softened and thinned somewhat. I fell asleep on and off with my head against him. He mumbled something about our need to sleep in a real bed that night. About two hours later, he pulled into the parking lot of a small convenience store and told me to wait on the motorcycle. I thought he was just going in to get us a snack, but when he came out, he was running. He hopped onto the cycle and we took off so fast, I nearly fell backwards. He sped up and I screamed at him, asking why he was going so fast. He didn't say anything. He just kept us going faster and faster. I was really frightened. A little more than a half hour later, I looked back and saw a police car closing on us.

“ ‘You better slow down and stop. I think he's after us,' I shouted to Lloyd, but he just went faster, trying to lose the police car by cutting off the highway at a turn. We nearly spilled and then he had to slow down because the road turned into nothing but a gravel path.

“I was surprised to hear the siren and see the police car still behind us. It caught up and pulled alongside. Lloyd finally had to slow down, cursing under his breath. When the policeman stepped out of his car, he had his gun drawn and I was so frightened, I started to cry.

“He made Lloyd get off the cycle and lay face down so he could put handcuffs on him and then he did the same to me. After that, he put us into the back of his car.

“ ‘You're arresting us just for speeding?' I cried at him.

“ ‘No ma'am,' he said, ‘just for robbing that convenience store back there,' he said.

“Lloyd had his head down. I asked him if that was true and he nodded and admitted that he had pulled a knife on the frightened elderly lady behind the counter.

“ ‘I thought if we just had a little more money, we could make it all right,' he said. ‘I'm sorry I got you into trouble,' he told me and I cried all the way to the police station, cried for both of us.

“I was permitted to make a phone call. That was the hardest decision: whom to call, Daddy or Mommy? I remember standing there with the receiver in my hand, staring at the numbers.

“ ‘You can't have all day,' the female officer nearby told me and I dialed Daddy. I was afraid Mommy would
just get hysterical and forget to get me help. He wasn't at home, so I called his office. He listened and then spoke like someone on a telephone in his grave. He asked me to put one of the police officers on and I stepped away.

“All I wanted to do was die before I had to face my parents again.”