Mrs. Everything (25 page)

“Is it Dev’s?” Bethie asked. Marjorie nodded. Without hesitation, Bethie slipped the tab on her tongue. The bitterness should have been the first hint that something was off—Dev’s blotter was normally tasteless, or even slightly sweet. This stuff made her face crinkle, and she had to struggle not to spit it out, but Marjorie seemed fine, so Bethie let the tab dissolve and waited for the drugs and the music to take her somewhere wonderful.

Time passed. Bethie could not have said how much. Instead of feeling the familiar upswelling of bliss, she felt a rising unease, the sourness in her mouth gathering into a sensation of
foreboding in her belly. When she felt hands grabbing at her from behind, she turned around. “Hey!” The man who’d touched her raised his hands, grinning at her, palms out in the universal gesture of apology. He had bare feet, crusted with dirt, and blue jeans, but on top of them he wore a white lab coat, and above that Bethie saw her Uncle Mel’s face, floating in the twilight. Her mouth dropped open. Uncle Mel reached out and squeezed her breast, hard enough to hurt.

Not real
, Bethie thought. Dev had told her what to do if she ever ended up on a bad trip.
Breathe. Keep calm. Go somewhere safe. Hold still and wait. I’ll find you, and I’ll take care of you. Remember that nothing you are seeing is real.
Bethie breathed in and out slowly, once, twice, three times, before turning to her right, looking for Marjorie. But Marjorie wasn’t there. In her place was Cheryl Goldfarb, wearing Queen Esther’s crown. “I was better than you were,” Cheryl said, through her red-lipsticked mouth. “They only gave you the part because everyone felt so sorry for you because your dad was dead.” Of course, that didn’t make sense—Bethie’s father hadn’t been dead when she’d been Queen Esther; he’d been at the performance, cheering for her. Bethie turned away, pushing through the crowd, as someone whispered
slut
and someone else whispered
fat-ass
.

Bethie kept moving, eyes down, ignoring the voices that called her names, who said that she was a whore and a liar and not as talented as Cheryl Goldfarb. The air felt thick and clinging and hard to breathe. A black cat with green eyes and white socks on its forepaws began to follow her, padding along at her side. A gray-and-black calico cat joined in behind the black cat, and an orange tabby fell in line. Next came a sleek gray cat with a white shield on its chest, and a fluffy brown cat with its fur wild and tangled. Bethie stopped, turned around, and looked at the cats, blinking. The cats sat down in a row and blinked back.

Not real
, she thought, walking more quickly, until she was jogging, then running, and every time she turned there were more cats, dozens of them, an army of cats following her on their little
feet, which so cunningly hid their claws.
Queen of the cats
, she thought, and remembered the Cheshire Cat in
Alice in Wonderland
. He told Alice he would see her again when she played croquet with the Queen.

Bethie stopped to catch her breath and looked around, trying to remember where the van had been. Somehow, she finally found a tree that looked familiar, and a car she recognized, a little VW Bug painted cheery blue. Three rows past the Bug was the Vanagon, with Sky standing guard by the driver’s seat. He was naked again, his white T-shirt puddled at his feet, and he stared at her with his dirty fingers plugged into his mouth. Bethie pressed her hand against the stitch in her side, trying to catch her breath. “Hi, honey,” she said, when she could speak again. The little boy stared at her blankly. Or maybe he was looking behind her. Bethie was afraid to turn around to see if the cats were still there. “You took off your dress.”

“It’s a shirt,” said the boy, lifting his nose disdainfully into the air.

“Do you know where Devon is?” She realized, as soon as she’d spoken, that the boy was unlikely to even know who Devon was, let alone where. Sky gave an indifferent shrug. Bethie reached for the van’s door.

The metal handle was feverishly hot against her palm as she gripped it. Bethie dragged the door open, feeling it grind on its tracks. A cloud of smoke came billowing out into the open air, along with the scent of pot and sweat, but when Bethie peered into the van’s dim interior, no one was there. Bethie turned, looking left, then right. Sky had vanished and she was all alone. She kept walking, head down, pushing past the barefoot girls and boys with harmonicas and tambourines. Johnny Cash was singing, still. “A, B, C, W, X, Y, Z, the cat’s in the cupboard but he don’t see me.” The music was moving all around her, it was twining like vines around her ankles and wrists and waist and throat, it was tripping her, choking her, and Bethie could taste blood in her throat, like hot copper.
I want my mom
, she thought.
I want
my sister. I want someone to save me. I want to go home.

“Hey!”

A boy fell out of the sky and landed in a crouch right in front of her. Bethie gave a little scream, jumping backward, and the boy straightened up, laughing. “Don’t be scared, I was just . . .” He pointed up. Bethie followed the path of his finger. There was a tree, and the tree was full of people, boys and girls who’d climbed up to straddle the branches, to get a better view of the stage.

“Oh,” she said. The boy put his hand on the small of her back, smiling. In the glimmering near-darkness, Bethie saw white skin, dark eyes, and beads around his neck. “Come with me,” he said. “You look like you could use some taking care of.” Bethie let him move her past the tree into a field, where there was a tent, and a group of boys, and sleeping bags, unzipped and spread out on the ground.

All she wanted to do was lie down, close her eyes, and wait for this terrible night to be over. “Don’t worry,” the boy was saying, “you’ll be fine. Bad trip? Bummer,” he said, when she nodded. She went with him, following along, weak with gratitude, letting him help her into a spot on the sleeping bags, as two, three, and finally four boys dropped out of the tree and came to join them. She shut her eyes, willing the world to stop spinning. It wasn’t until the first boy had her dress off, one hand over her mouth, clamping off her screams, and the other hand working between her legs that Bethie realized she’d made a terrible mistake.

Jo

J
o woke to the feeling of something shaking her in the shoulder, and Shelley’s insistent voice saying, “Look at this.” When Jo didn’t open her eyes, Shelley rolled the magazine into a tube and poked Jo’s shoulder and the side of her head.

“Five more minutes,” Jo murmured. She was still half-asleep, her eyelids heavy, her limbs warm and relaxed in the warmth beneath the covers in the bedroom of Shelley’s apartment, which her parents had allowed her to keep over the summer. In her dream, there’d been an old woman, a rambling mansion with turrets and towers and gingerbread trim. Was the mansion her prison? Was it a paradise she’d worked her whole life to obtain? Was the house somehow magical, letting her live different versions of her life from start to finish, then sending her back to the beginning again? In her head, Jo began to gather the threads that she could tie into a story, maybe one she could submit to the school’s literary magazine. After Shelley poked her again Jo sat up and looked at the page Shelley held open. It was an ad for the Peace Corps, black text on a yellow background.
NOW THAT YOU HAVE A DEGREE
,
GET AN EDUCATION
, it read.

“Shelley,” Jo said, struggling to keep her voice steady, even when what she wanted to do was rip the magazine out of Shelley’s hands and throw it at the wall. “We have a plan. Remember?”

Jo was ready to move to New York and start her life as a writer, with Shelley at her side, but Shelley had sidestepped and made excuses and had finally announced that what she wanted to do was travel; to take one big trip and see the world before they settled down. “My treat,” she’d insisted, and Jo had agreed to let her pay for the tickets. On August 14, they’d take their backpacks and board the plane to London. They’d see India and Turkey and Iran and Nepal; they would stay in an ashram in Goa and climb mountains in Tibet and float together in the sunshine in the warm waters of the Indian Sea. They had their tickets, a timetable for the buses, and reservations for three nights at a guesthouse in Istanbul recommended by one of Shelley’s fraternity pals’ older brothers. After that, they had no set agenda. They’d go where they wanted to go, and stay until they were ready to come home. Jo hoped it wouldn’t be for months, maybe even as long as a year. The world wouldn’t look twice at two young women, recent college graduates and best friends, traveling together. She and Shelley could share a room, even a bed, without arousing anyone’s suspicion, and if someone did get suspicious they could pack up and move on to another city, even another country. Jo planned to try to do some travel writing—she had made a list of magazines, with names of editors to whom she could submit pieces. She figured that she could make money teaching English, in a pinch, and if even that didn’t work out, she could wash dishes or clean houses, doing whatever it took to keep them afloat.

“I know we have a plan,” Shelley said, sitting back on her heels, pouting adorably. She wore Jo’s extra-large U of M T-shirt, which fell down past her knees, with nothing on underneath it, and her long, dark hair was still disheveled from sleep. “Only now I’m wondering if it’s selfish. I mean, aren’t we just indulging ourselves, when we should be using our college educations to help people?”

“How about this,” Jo said. “When we come back from our trip, if you still want to join the Peace Corps, I will seriously consider it.”

“Oh, you’ll seriously consider it,” Shelley said, widening her eyes and deepening her voice as she repeated Jo’s words. Jo opened her mouth, preparing to argue again in favor of their trip, as Shelley snuggled up beside her, kissing her cheek and her nose. It was hot outside, a sunny July day, the temperature already in the seventies, but the thick green leaves of the oak trees that lined the street formed a canopy over the house. Looking out the bedroom windows, all Jo could see was green, with sunshine filtering through, and she could hear cars and voices, but they sounded very far away. It was as if she and Shelley were in their own private tree house, the two of them alone together in their own sunny, summertime cocoon.

“I will,” said Jo. “But first, we are going to the Grand Bazaar and the hammams in Istanbul.” She flipped Shelley onto her back and bit her—not gently—on her neck. Shelley squealed, and sighed, spreading out her arms and legs, unfurling underneath her like a flower. “And then, we are going to the ruins of Ephesus.” Jo sucked gently at a spot underneath Shelley’s ear, loving the way Shelley wriggled underneath her. “We are going hiking in Cappadocia, and we are going to see the whirling dervishes in Konya.”

“Whirling dervishes.” Shelley sounded slightly breathless.

“Then we’re going to India.” Jo kissed her way down Shelley’s neck and chest, taking Shelley’s teacup breasts in her hands. “We’ll go to an ashram in Udipalya and learn yoga. We’ll take a bus to the beaches in Goa and sit on the sand in the sun.” Jo kept kissing until Shelley gripped her head, trying to push her down, but Jo would not let herself be pushed. She stopped and sat up, leaning back on her heels. Shelley whined, groping for Jo’s hands, and Jo let Shelley hold them but would not let Shelley pull her down.

“And then what?” she prompted.

“No fair,” Shelley panted.

With one fingertip, Jo stroked a line from the sweet indentation of Shelley’s navel, down through the silky black curls, and pressed the pad of her finger against the kernel of pink flesh. Shelley writhed, gasping. “What next?” Jo asked.

“The Village!” Shelley said. Jo rewarded her by moving her finger, very slightly, up and down. “We’ll have an apartment . . . and we’ll live in the Village . . . and I’ll act in plays, and you’ll write for magazines, and you’ll learn how to cook, and I’ll have a window seat so I can watch all the people, and we’ll go dancing . . . oh,” she sighed as finally Jo bent her head toward Shelley’s sweetness and gave her lovely girl what she wanted. It wasn’t fair, she thought. But if sex was what it took to get Shelley to agree with Jo’s plans, to get her to admit that Jo was who she wanted, Jo would use sex. She would be ruthless, if ruthlessness was what was required.

When it was over, Shelley curled on her side, giving Jo her back, lying quiet and thoughtful, while Jo got up to shower and dress. She’d gotten used to this by now. For the last six months, Jo and Shelley had been together constantly. They weren’t taking any of the same classes, but at least once a day, they’d manage to meet up. In the library, they’d sit across from each other, with their books open on the table and, underneath it, the tips of Jo’s toes resting against Shelley’s instep or her calf. At the Student Union, where they’d have coffee or lunch, Shelley would brush her hand against Jo’s at the table as she gestured, making a point, or Jo would touch Shelley’s shoulder or the small of Shelley’s back as they left, steering her past a group of boys. Shelley would watch Jo play intramural basketball or volleyball, clapping when Jo made a basket or scored a point, and they’d walk back together through the twilight, Jo glowing and sweaty, Shelley dainty and neat, beside her.

They slept together almost every night, most of them at Shelley’s place. Her room was easily three times the size of Jo’s, and she had a queen-sized bed with a carved-wood headboard and footboard, a matching desk and dresser and vanity, a bookcase
for her textbooks and a table for her record player. Her walls were covered with paintings framed in glass, reproductions of Monet’s water lilies and Degas’s ballerinas, interspersed with posters for Phil Ochs and Dylan that were just thumbtacked to the plaster. Above the bed hung Shelley’s prized possession, a Beatles poster from Sweden in cheery shades of red and pink that read
HJÄLP
! A pink-and-white rug covered the floor, and Indian-print fabrics covered the love seat. It was a reflection of Shelley, Jo thought; the room of a girl who was trying to make up her mind.