The Blue Girl (16 page)

He just sits there, staring. I feel my breath coming quicker under the blanket and wonder if I'll hyperventilate, if my heart will move into tachycardia right there in the car. Who's to say I won't die?

It's
O.K
., Buck whispers to me under the blanket.
Audrey will make it
O.K
. again
.

Buck tells me how Audrey felt when she saved her.

She tells me everything about her at night
, he whispers as we huddle under the blanket.
I get into bed with her, and she tells me how she went underwater, and how the girl punched her, right in the face. What I like best is when she tells me how it felt to have her mouth on the blue girl's mouth
.

I ask Buck what else he knows, and he says,
She feels big now. Inside
.

I hear Buck whispering more, but I can't make out the words. Finally Audrey's father starts the car, and I lie under
the blanket thinking about what I want the blue girl to know. I unzip the backpack as quietly as I can. Her father drives. Someone is singing. Maybe it's Audrey. I pull one of the moon pies out, unwrapping it as quietly as I can, and then I hold it up against my mouth and whisper into it all the things I want to say.

Libby

T
HAT NIGHT I FINALLY DREAMED AGAIN, BUT IT
was not a relief. Through all this time of not dreaming, I've thought of my mind as a soaked ball that needed to be wrung out to dry. Not a sopping towel or a blanket, but a ball. Not something that could be sent to a dry cleaner or moved through a wash cycle, but something that just needed to be set out in the sun, allowing the liquid to seep out and eventually dry. So it was not a surprise that I dreamed, before waking up to Magda's call about finding Greg and Rebecca on the porch, about the creaking of the wicker sofa.

On top of her
, she said on the phone to me.
They didn't see me, and I didn't stop them. I just closed the door. That was wrong, I know, but what kind of mother would I be not to tell you? What kind of friend? That is what I want to know, Libby. What kind of friend would not tell?

It's not that she wanted to call, she said. She had no desire to bother me at night, on a night when we had no
plans to go to the girl, on a night when Ethan had knocked all the pots and pans to the floor and laughed his high-pitched laugh, then threw them, one after another, at the white kitchen wall, now marked up with metal spots.

What kind of a mother am I, is more the point
, I said, looking at the wall. Ethan had thrown the pots and then sat on the kitchen floor and rocked back and forth.
Rebecca tells me nothing. Maybe it's because I don't ask
.

Ethan was eating bits of chocolate that I use for the moon pies. I handed him the rest of the bag and just stood watching, doing nothing, as he shoveled in one piece after another.

Good for Ethan
, he said,
so good
, and then he cried, the way he does, my broken boy who does things he and no one else understands.

I didn't even know Rebecca was gone.

Go ahead and disappear
, I told Jeff the night before when he came in from work at two in the morning.
Do it already. You might as well be gone
.

I told Magda not to tell me anymore, not now, because first I had to get my son into bed, my son who had thrown my pots all over the kitchen and eaten an entire bag of chocolate.

Greg went after her, that boy of mine
, Magda said.
Such bad manners and always with the swearing. She ran out with her jacket with
that boy of mine chasing after her. Him, always with the chasing. I should have gone after her in the car, not let her walk so far at night
.

She'll be all right
, I said.
She knows the way
.

Yes
, Magda said,
better than we do
, and we laughed for a minute before she said,
Tomorrow night. Tomorrow night we need to go
.

Yes, yes, I know we need to go, can't she feel how much I know it? But I am behind on my moon pies and have no time for baking. I have a son, crying, with a face filled with chocolate, and a daughter walking home in this small lake town, humiliated in her jacket. A daughter I need right now to help get her brother off the floor and up to bed where he belongs.

We lock him in, it's true. I've talked to Jeff about installing a different alarm with an extra sensor for Ethan's door, since he tripped the first one so many times we had it disconnected. Jeff didn't answer, because that is how Jeff is. Disconnected. Here I am, caging up my own son. But how could I sleep if I let him wander in the night, through the hallway and down the stairs? Before we began locking his door, he went into Rebecca's room, and she guided him back into his bed with the white sheets and the white walls and the white pillows, with even the white moon shining out his window. So now,
of course she goes with Greg. What kind of a life has this been for a young girl?

And what about me?
Jeff says when I get Ethan off the floor without his help, as always.
What the hell kind of life do you think this is for me?
he says when I tell him my concerns for Rebecca, our daughter so beautiful that all the men's eyes follow her in town. If she's smart she'll keep walking until they can't see her anymore, until she's walked herself straight out of this town, away from all of us, from the girl who swallows our pies and the boy who can't stop touching her.

But she would never leave her brother. This much I know. She loves her brother, who calls to her from behind the locked door,
Becca, Becca, Ethan wants to go. Ethan wants out
.

I get Ethan off the floor and take him upstairs where Jeff is now, home early this night as if to erase the lateness from the night before. When I get Ethan to his room and prepare to lock the door from the outside, I turn him around and tell him,
Say good-night to Dad
.

He looks straight at Jeff with that blank stare of his and laughs.

Ethan goes to bed now, go to bed, Ethan, brush your teeth, Ethan, Ethan, go to bed!
Ethan shouts in his cartoon voice.

Yes
, I say, and press the fleshy part of his right hand.
It's to make him feel connected to himself again, one of his teachers had taught me.
It's not just that he has trouble making sense of things we take for granted
, she said,
but imagine walking around feeling the way he does, like his head is in one place and his body is in another
.

Wants to rub the hand
, he says.
Good boy, Ethan, that's good
, and I say,
Yes, I'll rub the hand, and now Ethan will brush his teeth, yes, good, come now, Ethan is so good, and now Ethan must go to bed
.

When Ethan turns, my two hands still kneading the flesh of his palm, he speaks low in his own voice, the deep voice of the boy who is inside, always locked inside. The boy who only appears as his truest self just when I suspect his truest self is gone.

Good-night, Dad
, he says.
Good-night
.

When Jeff doesn't answer, Ethan makes a whimpering sound, the way he does sometimes before a fit or when sounds or lights agitate him.

It's all right, Ethan
, I say.
Ethan said good-night
.

I watch him brush his teeth in the careful way he has of being sure not to let the toothpaste touch his lips or tongue, then I take him into the white bedroom and tell him good-night. Before I shut off the light, his eyes are closed, his head on the pillow that he folds over his ears before he begins to rock, slowly, always first left and then right. I close the door and lock it from the outside and lean
against it listening for sounds, for any sounds, until I hear Rebecca at the back door.

I cannot let him wander
, I say aloud outside his room.
I cannot let this happen
.

It already happened
, Rebecca says.

I want to ask her who she is talking about, herself or Ethan, but Ethan is banging, and we are both so tired.

Just go to bed, Mom
, she says.
He's not going anywhere tonight, and neither am I
.

I move to hug her but stop myself, because I can see in her eyes she has had enough touching for one night.

In the dream I was playing with Irene's husband, Colin, the two of us throwing a Nerf ball from one to another, back and forth, back and forth. The ball was soft and dry, not soaked as I've imagined, but still I was afraid to drop it.

It's your turn to shoot
, Colin said.

He pointed a finger at me and then at the hoop he kept hung over a doorframe.

I tossed the ball back to him. He spun it on one finger and threw it back at me, hard.

I don't want to
, I said. I tried to get up from the couch but found my pants soaked through with marshmallow filling.

Please
, I said,
I don't want to be the one to shoot
.

You shoot first
, Colin said. He placed the ball in the middle of the floor.
Or else there is no more game
.

So I shoot first.

I take the dream as a sign, because how else can anyone take a dream after years of wanting? And what is it that I want from my own husband and Ethan and Rebecca? It used to be that I was a different sort of woman, a woman who could say,
I want this but not that, and this more than anything
. I used to be filled with wanting. I wonder if Rebecca is that way now, the pretty girl in town filled with wanting, the pretty girl who inspires all the wanting. I wonder if that's what my mother wanted for me. I wish she were here to ask, even if the answer disappointed us both.
If I'm going to lock my son in his room
, I think, standing in the dark, with moon pies sealed inside the Ziploc bag that I carry in my tote,
then I am going to be first
.

We're in the dark, under the trees, when I tell them I must be first this time.
It's something I have to do
, I tell Irene and Magda when we get there and stand outside in the dark, with the pies warm and our breath in clouds in front of us. Irene lights a cigarette and offers it to Magda and then to me, but smoke in my mouth and lungs is not one of the things I want. At least I seem to know what I don't want, even if I don't know what it is I do want.

Oh, Libby
, Irene says,
we should have known. Always, always, of course. From now on, you should go first
.

Magda touches my hand and tells me how hard it must be for me.
So hard
, she says,
having a son like him. Never mind the foolishness happening with Greg and Rebecca
.

Like him?
I ask. As if he has no name. And what does that mean,
like him?
All these years in this town, and still, is this how they think of my son—a boy like him—all of them probably saying their prayers at night in gratitude that they have not been—what is it one of the women from the
PTA
once said?—burdened. No . . . not burdened . . . saddled, maybe, like a horse. I think of all of the looks I got when I used to take him to the store, before he grew so tall and became harder and harder to hold. Or when the kids were small, out at the lake when they first started to notice he couldn't follow their games, the lake that shimmers now as we stand here, three women with moon pies.
How sad it must be
, I've heard people say,
to have a son “like that.”