Story of a Girl (9 page)

Darren was silent for a minute, watching April suck on her bottle. “And that’s a reason to leave? Because I didn’t get all that from a dye job?” He looked at me. “What if she doesn’t come back?”

“She has to.”

Later, I went down to the basement to see if Darren had heard anything. He sat on the edge of the bed, channel surfing, while April slept in her car seat on the floor. Not exactly a picture for the family photo album I kept in my head.

“Do you want me to bring you a pizza tonight or anything?” I asked.

“Yeah, okay. Thanks.” He didn’t take his eyes off the TV even though it was just a commercial. I sat next to him and flipped through one of Stacy’s magazines; April woke up and started to cry.

“Come on,” Darren said, dropping the remote, “nap time ain’t over. You can do better than that.” He picked her up and took her over to the crib. She quieted down after a couple of minutes of him standing over her and talking soft, with no idea he was doing the exact same thing Dad had done earlier.

Then he was quiet and froze, staring at the lighthouse poster over the crib.

“Hellooo,” I said.

He turned around and looked at me funny. “Come here.”

I did. “Yeah?”

“Look.” He pointed to the print at the bottom of the poster, which read,
Pigeon Point Light Station State Historic Park.

“So?”

“That’s where I took her for her birthday last year. It’s in Pescadero.”

For a second I wondered if Darren was having some kind of breakdown or going into shock or something. “Like I said: so?”

“I don’t know. You know how she is about lighthouses. And there’s a youth hostel there,” he said. “It’s really cheap . . .”

It seemed like a long shot to me, but he sounded so hopeful and anyway, he knew her better than I did. “Is there a phone number?”

“I don’t want to call. If she’s there, I don’t want her to know I’m coming.”

After the whole scene in the kitchen with my dad — the way he held April, the way he almost really looked at me — I was an easy target for getting pulled into Darren’s hopefulness. “We could leave first thing tomorrow,” I said. “You can pack while I’m at work.”

“I’m going tonight,” Darren said. He got a duffle bag out of the closet and started throwing stuff into it while I watched, already knowing the truth of what was about to happen.

“But I have to work,” I said. “Can’t you wait?”

He looked at me and shook his head.

“I’ll call work and tell them I can’t come in tonight.”

“You’re not coming with me.”

I couldn’t listen to what he was saying. I couldn’t let him say what I knew he was going to say next, or soon, or eventually. “You need someone to help you with April,” I said, my voice starting to wobble.

“Not really.”

There’s this picture of Darren and Stacy, a snapshot I took a few days before April was born. They kept it on their nightstand in a purple plastic frame I’d picked up at Walgreens. I concentrated on it, ignoring what Darren had said. “You think you’re going to drive two hours with April screaming her head off after you haven’t slept for, like, twenty-four hours?”

“Don’t be such a drama queen,” he said. “I deal with April all the time. Anyway, she likes riding in the car.”

My eyes fixed on the picture: Stacy in Darren’s lap with her arm around his neck, Darren’s hand on her big belly. Anyone could see it. They were already a family. Darren and Stacy and April, they didn’t need me to complete them. Them: a family. Me: always the extra, unnecessary, undeclared nobody.

Maybe I knew it all along; maybe that’s why I never actually talked to them about it, my plan for all of us living together.

“Fine,” I said. “Go without me.”

“Come on, Deanna. Don’t be like that.”

“You’re not even packing the right stuff for April. She needs, like, twice as many diapers as that.”

He stopped packing and came toward me. “Deanna . . .” His voice was big brotherly, like,
Okay, I gotta be nice to my sister or she’s going to start crying and then I’ll be stuck here dealing with it
.

“Don’t,” I said, backing up. The room blurred. “Forget it, it’s okay. Just go. I don’t care.”

“Yes, you do. Look, you know we’re moving out as soon as we can. You and me can’t do everything together.” I wished he would stop talking; I wished I’d never come downstairs. “This,” he said, “
this
is something I definitely have to do alone.”

“I know.” I crossed the room and started folding the endless pile of laundry on the bed. I couldn’t cry. I wouldn’t.

“I mean, we might as well get used to it, you know?”

I tried, I did, to keep from saying anything else, but I was outside of it now, watching myself turn into a big baby right in front of him, all the time thinking I should just shut up. “Why not?” I asked, turning toward him.

“Why not what?”

“Why couldn’t I live with you guys?”

There, I thought. I said it. I wouldn’t pretend anymore that it wasn’t what I wanted, that it made no difference to me.

He rubbed his hands over his face. “Shit. Deanna, don’t do this right now, okay?”

“I could watch April in the afternoons,” I said, pleading. “And clean the house and help with the rent and everything.”

Then he laughed. He actually laughed and shook his head.

“It’s not a joke!”

April whimpered.

Darren stopped. “I know. But have you been paying attention? Stacy and I have to get our shit together, like,
now
. I mean, look at us! We have the kid and maybe that wasn’t the smartest thing we ever did, but there she is. We live in the basement of our extremely fucked-up parents.” He went back to his packing. “It’s not a good start, Deanna, is what I’m saying.”

“But you guys manage!” My voice dissolved into the tears I’d been determined not to cry. “I could
help
. I could. I could help.”

“We
manage
? Stacy’s gone! Doesn’t that tell you anything?”

“Don’t yell at me!”

“I’m . . .” He lowered his voice. “I’m not. Deanna, me and Stacy have to do more than manage. Mom and Dad? They manage. April deserves better than that.” He zipped the duffle and put on his jacket. “So do I.”

“And
I
deserve to stay here and keep eating shit?”

“No,” he said, sighing. “But you’re gonna have to find your own way out.”

I dropped the laundry I’d been holding onto: a tiny T-shirt of April’s, a pair of Stacy’s socks.

I turned around.

I walked up the stairs.

I did not look back.

7A.

I, Deanna Lambert, belong to no one, and no one belongs to me.

I don’t know what to do.

7B.

Darren left around four. He knocked on my door and asked, through the wall, if I wanted him to drop me off at work on his way down the coast, but I pretended not to hear. When he was gone I went to the kitchen and made myself some ramen. Mom came back from running errands while I ate, dragging into the kitchen looking like she could be my grandma instead of my mom, all gray roots and droopy eyelids.

“There’s leftover pot roast,” she said, setting her big purse on the table. She went straight to the fridge and started pulling stuff out. The cold smell of old but not quite spoiled food wafted across the room. “Or I could make you a sandwich. There’s also spaghetti from Wednesday night.”

“This is what I want.”

“Are you sure? How about a can of soup? Can I heat you up a can of soup?”

“This
is
soup.” She still had her head in the fridge, her back to me. “God, Mom, can’t you stop for one second?”

That got her to turn around, her face drawn, and all of her small somehow. Her hands were on her hips in that way she used to do when Darren or I were in trouble and she’d say,
Deanna Louise, I told you not to touch that
or
Darren Christopher, leave your sister alone!
But this time she let her hands drop without scolding me and turned to the counter. “Well, I’m going to make myself a pot roast sandwich. With lots of onion. I’ve been thinking about it all day.”

I rinsed out my bowl and watched Mom make her sandwich. “I don’t guess we heard anything from Stacy?” she asked.

“No. But . . .” I had a hard time even saying his name. “Darren had an idea where she might be. He just left with April.”

“Oh!” Mom actually smiled. “Well, that is good news. Hopefully she’ll be back in her own bed tonight.” Like it was that easy. Like Stacy could just come back and everything would be like nothing had ever happened, the same way Mom wanted it to be between me and Dad.

“I have to go to work,” I said.

She did stop, then, and look at me, a cloud of concern passing over her already-worn face. “Honey? Have you been crying?”

I shook my head.

She stepped toward me, put her hand on my cheek.

I pulled away.

Her hand withdrew, left to hang by her side. “Well. Do you want a ride to work?”

I shook my head again, got my stuff, and left.

8.

Work was typical: Tommy acting like an asshat, customers confused by the handwritten menu, the salad bar giving off its usual stink. About ten minutes before closing, Michael got a call. His niece was stranded at the Colma BART station and he had to give her a ride home.

“Can you two close up without me?”

“Sure,” Tommy said, popping a couple of olives into his mouth. “It’s not rocket science.”

“Lucky for you,” Michael said.

On his way out, he asked me if I’d be all right there alone with Tommy. “You can leave now if you want,” he said. It was nice, you know, the way Michael looked out for me that way. Too bad I didn’t know him when I was thirteen.

“I’ll stay,” I said. “It’s not like there’s anything or anyone waiting for me at home.” Michael gave me a look, and I cringed at the self-pity in my voice. I didn’t want to turn into one of those
look-at-me-my-life-is-so-hard
people. “Go,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. “We got it covered.”

The second Michael was out the door, Tommy turned up the jukebox, punching up his usual playlist of cheesy ’80s rock. I bleached the cutting boards while Tommy cleaned the bathrooms, sometimes stopping to play air guitar on the mop.

“Hey, Dee Dee,” he called from the women’s room, “gimme your friend’s phone number.”

“Stop calling me that. I mean it.” I plunged my gloved hands into the bucket of bleach water, heat burning through the green latex. “And if you mean Lee, she’s taken.”

He stood in the bathroom doorway with the mop in his hands, the corners of his mouth curled up into a smile, that smile that pissed me off and sped up my heart all at once. “Jealous, huh? Don’t want to give up the digits?”

I walked away from him and into the back to dump the bucket. He followed me. “Can’t you ever just be
nice
to me?” I asked, rinsing the stainless-steel sink. “You used to be so
nice
sometimes.” It was true. There were times he would listen to me talk about school, chiming in sometimes to say this or that teacher was a prick, laughing when I told him about something funny that had happened. I always liked that part of it, how he would listen and just go with it, not like a big brother or a parent, and not like a possessive boyfriend who wanted to know about every guy who talked to me in school. I’d just relive the day with him while he drove, and he’d listen.

Times like that, he’d been my friend. I hadn’t thought the words “friend” and “Tommy” together for a long time, maybe ever. It now brought on a whole new wave of hurt at the way he’d treated me.

He stood by me at the sink, leaning on the mop. “I’m nice. I can be nice. Like for instance, I know you and your friend had a fight the other night, right? Tell me what happened. I’ll listen. Nice.”

I shook my head. “None of your business.”

“Okay, fine,” he said, wringing the mop out and hanging it on the wall with the broom and dustpan and other cleaning stuff. “How about this: I’ll give you a ride home. That’s how nice I am.”

“I’d rather walk.”

He laughed. “See, you don’t
want
me to be nice.” He untied his apron. “I’m just bad old Tommy, the one who ruined your life, right? Whatever works for you.”

We finished cleaning up, took the garbage out, and locked the door. Tommy lit a cigarette, the flame of the lighter illuminating his face. A shadow flickered across the scar on his left cheek.

I remembered touching that scar our first night together.

At least back then, I belonged to someone. Tommy had chosen me, and whatever it really was, the two of us were
something,
something that we weren’t without each other.

It was cold out and foggy and no one would be coming to get me. Darren had made his choice, and it didn’t include me. Jason had Lee. Mom and Dad . . . well, the whole idea of parents seemed like a part of ancient history.

Tommy didn’t scare me; I knew what he was all about.

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “I’ll take a ride home.”

He looked at me sideways, like to see if I was serious. He shivered a little in the fog and for once seemed to have run out of smart-ass remarks. “Come on.”

We walked to his car. He opened the passenger door for me. I slid into the bench seat and as he closed the door behind me with a thunk, I knew what was going to happen next.

He got in, fired up the engine. He pulled out of the space and drove slowly to the parking lot exit and stopped. A right turn would take us to my house, where my parents were probably asleep and Darren and April were gone and I would lie alone in my room, awake in the dark, wondering what would happen to me. A left turn would take us toward Highway 1, and the old Chart House parking lot, a warm car on a cold night, me knowing exactly what to expect.

Tommy put on the left blinker. I didn’t say anything.

I was never going to find a guy like Jason for myself. I knew it. I would never be that person, the one who made her parents proud and was there when her friends really needed her. I would never be part of Darren and Stacy’s family, not the way I’d pictured.

Tommy turned left and pulled out onto the highway.

I rolled down my window a little. The fog was so thick that I couldn’t see even the road in front of us, never mind the dark of the ocean. I could smell it, though, the wet salt of it, as Tommy drove slow, the headlight beams bouncing off the wall of fog. He pulled into the lot and when he killed the lights, the ice plant–covered bluff was still there the way it had always been, the way it had been the night my dad followed us.

“You want to fire one up?” Tommy asked, digging in his pocket for a joint.

“No, thanks.” Beyond the bluff was more fog, and beneath that the beach, and then the ocean and then nothing past that but horizon, I knew. “I’ll take a cigarette, though,” I said.

Darren would kill me if he knew, after how he’d helped me quit, but it was all part of the ritual that was Tommy and me. I knew it just like I knew the ocean was there even though I couldn’t see it. He handed me a smoke and his lighter. I put the cigarette between my lips and flicked the lighter a couple of times before it caught, then inhaled deeply, like I used to. It made me cough; Tommy laughed. When I could talk, I just said, “Shit,” and put the cigarette out after taking one more little puff.

Tommy put the lighter back in his pocket and messed with the car radio for a few seconds — more ritual — before turning it off and saying, “Don’t want to drain the battery.”

“Right.”

Next should have been him reaching over and rubbing my shoulder while I talked and finished my cigarette, but since I’d already put it out we were off the playbook now. I could have told him I wanted to go home; he would have taken me. There was one other car in the lot, way over in the south corner. I wondered if the people in it were like me and Tommy, or more like Jason and Lee. Or maybe there was just one person, alone, someone else who didn’t want to go home.

Tommy drummed his hands on the steering wheel. “Soooo . . .” He tried to give me his cocky grin but it only looked afraid. I slid over to him on the bench seat of the car and he kissed me. It was like a first kiss, shy and short, not a kiss I expected from someone I’d made out with a hundred times before.

We kissed some more and it didn’t take long for that shyness to wear off, and soon we were back to where we’d left off all those years ago and I let his hands go wherever. I don’t remember now how it felt. I wanted it to feel good. I wanted it to feel something. I wanted to remember what it had been like when I was thirteen, if I could figure out why I’d gone along with Tommy and everything he said and did. Was it only because he happened to be the one who came along when he did? Could it have been anyone? Or was there something about him, Tommy Webber, that I liked and cared about? There in the Buick with the fog all around us, I tried to connect with my thirteen-year-old self, remember what she felt like, what she wanted.

We kept making out and Tommy took my Picasso’s shirt off. We both smelled like pizza. He reached down the side of the bench seat and slid it back, then there was the old thing — the soft but steady pressure on my shoulder with one hand, the other gently pulling on my hair. The first time he did that I was confused, not sure what he wanted. But I wasn’t completely stupid and I’d heard about it from Melony, and, I mean, I guess it’s just human instinct to sort of figure it out. I remember that first time I didn’t want to do it, really, I just wanted to keep kissing and stuff like we had been. But I was stoned and it seemed like a reasonable alternative to going all the way and I didn’t want him to get mad at me. I didn’t want it all to stop.

“Come on, Dee Dee,” he said now.

I pushed against his hand and sat up. “Can’t you just . . .” I didn’t know what I wanted to say. “I don’t want to right now.”

“Yeah, you do. Come on. Please? You used to love doing that.” It was both sad and funny, you know, how two people’s memory of the same thing could be so different. And that was the whole problem, really, that this thing had happened between us, and to Tommy it was one thing and to me it was something else, and once my dad got involved it became something else again. Three people at the scene of the crime, each with a different story. Add onto that the whole jury known as Terra Nova High School and who knew anymore what had really happened?

I grabbed my shirt and got out of the car. I stood outside in the fog, in my bra, turning my shirt right-side-out. Someone in the other car rolled down their window and I heard a girl yell, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, no problem,” I called across the lot. I put my shirt back on, and Tommy got out on his side, looking at me across the shiny top of the car.

“What’s wrong?”

“I didn’t used to love doing that,” I said.

“Okay.” He smiled. “But
I
liked it when you did that, and I know I made you feel good, too. I
know
that. I always gave as good as I got.”

“I didn’t say it didn’t feel good . . .” They never tell you this part in sex ed, how to talk about what you did and why you did it and what you thought about it, before, during, and after.

“Then what are you talking about?” He folded his arms on the roof of the car and leaned on them. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem,” I started. “Just . . . the whole thing . . .” Then I was crying and couldn’t stop. Twice in one day with the crying. Tommy’s smirk went away and he came over to my side of the car. This would be where a regular guy, an ex who cared about you, would, like, give you a hug or something, right? Tommy could only stare and look like he wanted to be anywhere else.

“What? What did I do?”

“God, Tommy! I was thirteen!” He watched me cry some more. “Can’t you say anything?” I asked. “I’d never even gone on a date. I still haven’t.”

“And that’s my fault?”

“You were seventeen. Supposedly Darren’s best friend.” I wiped my arm across my face, trying to calm down. “You know I could have pressed charges? There are laws.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I
know
. That’s not . . . What if you had a little sister,” I said, “and Darren did all that shit to her you did to me?”

“‘Did’ to you? What’s that supposed to mean?” He seemed sincerely confused. “Are you saying I, like,
raped
you? Because if you’re saying that . . .”

“No. No, I — you never even took me out. We never went to a movie. We never just hung out and watched TV.”
We never held hands, we never went for a walk, we never went out for anything to eat
. The longer the list got in my head, the more pathetic I felt. The more I felt hurt, the more I felt angry, the more I felt everything. “What
was
I to you, Tommy? What did you think of me?”

“What did I
think
of you? I liked you, didn’t I? I thought you were cute. I thought you were a turn-on.”

“You thought I was an easy target, is what you thought. Right?”

“No, I . . .” He shrugged. “What do you want me to say?”

A wind kicked up off the ocean and everything moved, the trees and power lines and dune grass. The smell of salt and seaweed washed over us. That and the sound of the waves down on the beach and a car going by on the highway took me right back, right back to that year of being with Tommy a couple of times a week and then going home, Mom at work and Dad watching TV or looking at job ads in the paper or talking to his caseworker at the unemployment office, yelling at her, telling her how he’d been with National Paper nineteen years and they owed him, goddamnit, they
owed
him something. Or he’d be in his bed, asleep or just staring at the ceiling, and the house was quiet, quiet and angry, and I’d go straight to my room and tell myself that this was all temporary and pretty soon he’d get a job and Mom would be home more and someone would ask me where I’d been.

I looked at Tommy, his lean body and the hard, small muscles in his arms, the scar on his cheek, and okay, he’d meant something to me. When we were starting out, the way he wanted me and the way he listened to me, and what I’d given him, what we’d given each other, it
meant
something.

“Why’d you tell everyone, Tommy? You made it all into a big joke, just a big fucking funny story,” I said. “Like none of it mattered.”

He turned away from me, toward the beach.

I wiped my nose again. “It never should have been like that.”

He went around to his side of the car and got in. I walked through the parking lot to get the rest of the tears out, exhausted and a little relieved. It felt like I’d been waiting to say that stuff to Tommy my whole life. He started the car and backed up like he was going to drive away, but then pulled to where I stood. “You getting in?”

The ride felt fast and familiar, like the times he’d be hurrying to get me home, the windows down to get the smell of pot out of the car.

When we got close to my house, a raccoon waddled out in front of the car. We both swore and Tommy put on the brakes. The raccoon looked at us over its shoulder and lumbered off into someone’s yard. Tommy drove slow the rest of the way.

And then there was the house: the peeling paint, the overgrown lawn, the abandoned flowerpots. The doorway Tommy had first leaned into, plucking me out of my old life and driving me into a new one. I ran my hand over the car door handle. I’d never really left that life; I could see that now. It had only been on pause. This, though, was an ending. Tommy wasn’t for me. Okay, it was nice that he still wanted me, that I could still have that effect on him. But he wasn’t exactly choosy.