When We Were Friends (38 page)

“It was so ridiculous, obviously, especially with what I know about David now. But after I told the story somebody else overheard and said,
Are you kidding me?
And I saw how they were looking at me, this bright expectation, and I said, Yeah, plus she also does
this
and
this
, and before I knew it word got around.”

I stared at the dirty windshield, unblinking; my lungs felt filled with glue. All that time I’d known there must be something horribly wrong with me—that I’d been so pathetic I couldn’t even see how pathetic I was—all that time my biggest flaw was not being good enough for David McGrath?

“It all blew up so fast, and it didn’t even work. I started dating Mike Garnett, remember him? To make David jealous, but David went out of his way to avoid me. He actually asked me later why I was being such a jerk to somebody who used to be my best friend, isn’t that ironic? But by then it was too late.”

I remembered my yearbook picture from that year, my carefully ironed hair, nicest shirt and painstakingly lined lips. The hour I’d spent by the mirror that morning meticulously concealing an acne scar, trying on all my earrings and practicing various versions of a smile. But the photo showed my true self in my hollow eyes, that haunted, pleading desolation.

And I wanted to hate Sydney for that, but instead I just felt like crying. For the Lainey in the picture, my loneliness, that longing to be welcomed into the center of those clusters of girls. And also … also for Sydney, who’d needed something and had had no idea how to get it. The pointlessness of it all.

For a minute she didn’t speak; I could hear her breathing on the other end of the line. And then she said, “Can you forgive me? I needed you to get what happened in high school, but now most of all I need you to understand I’m doing the best I can here, and that it wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. It’s like back then, things I did just taking on a life of their own. Both then and now just started out as a mistake, and the events blew up and started leading me.”

I wanted to tell her how of course it wasn’t even remotely the same, how she was crazy to think we could ever be friends again. But I was starting to realize that I didn’t resent Sydney anymore. Maybe it was seeing she hadn’t, after all, destroyed my life, that at least for this moment I was happier than I’d ever been. Or maybe it was just that I was understanding, for the first time, that Sydney had never set out purposefully to hurt me. So I said, “I’ll try to forgive you, Sydney. Or at least keep working with you to figure out how to get through this.”

She was quiet a minute, absorbing this, then said, “Thank you.”

I looked down at the backs of my hands, studying them, the wrinkles I was noticing for the first time at my knuckles and the pronounced blue veins. And where once it would’ve been distressing, a sign of time running out, now in a strange way it made me feel almost proud. I leaned back in my seat. “You’re welcome.”

“Lainey?” she said softly. “Lainey, I have to tell you something.”

I felt a twitch of trepidation. Nobody ever says they have to tell you something and then follows it with something you want to hear. “What?”

“The thing is …” She paused. “Lainey, I’m going to disappear for a while. And I need to know you’ll be okay with that.”

“Wait, what?” I shook my head quickly, feeling a sudden
thwack
, like something was snapping back into my chest. “What do you mean you’re disappearing? I thought you weren’t leaving until they cleared your name!”

“It’s just I’m kind of in trouble here. I’m pretty sure I’m their prime suspect now, the questions they’ve been asking, the way they’re asking; my lawyer doesn’t even let me answer half of them, that’s how incriminating they are. They’re all focused on Kemper now, they interrogated me for twenty straight hours trying to get me to break, and I know I can’t keep refusing to give them his name and number. They’ll make me tell them.”

I stared blankly at the gravel by the side of the road, fought to keep my voice calm. “So you’re going to just run away from all of it? You
think that’ll make it go away? They’ll just take it as an admission of guilt.”

“Well of course I realize that, and at this point it’s not even legal for me to be leaving the state. But what’s the alternative? This is for your good too.”

“Don’t you dare say any of this is for my good.”

“You know what I mean. Yeah, I’m not doing this for you, but I’m also not doing it for myself. I’m trying to save Jacqueline’s life, you know that, and there’s no good answers here. I’m out of options! I’m not going to just sit around and let them arrest me and take her away.”

“What’s going to happen if you disappear? They’re going to try and figure out where you’ve gone, which means they’ll look even closer at all the names you gave them. They’ll figure out me and Star are gone and then maybe question Pamela, and I know she loves me but she’s not going to lie to the police. The cops’ll be here within seconds, so is that a good option?”

“What else can I do?” She sounded on the verge of tears. “What if they put me in jail? I’d
die
in jail; I’m not strong enough for that kind of life. I’d kill myself!”

“Why don’t you at least wait it out and see what happens? If things get much worse, then call me and we’ll figure out what to do next, but they can’t arrest you now. Not when they don’t have any kind of proof.”

“It’s not just that, Lainey. You should see the people around here. The way they’re all looking at me now, this evil eye like they think I’m a baby killer or something, and I’m scared to even go outside. I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to lynch me.”

Despite myself, I felt a twinge of pleasure. Remembering how it had been sitting alone at a pep rally, unable to look up but sure that everyone’s eyes were on me. Playing soccer in gym, being tripped either accidentally or on purpose as I lunged for the ball, the snorts of suppressed laughter. Welcome to my world, Sydney. Never expected to see you here.

“And also, also I want to see Jacqueline. That’s the biggest reason. I’m leaving Virginia because I want to come see you.”

I widened my eyes. “No. No way, Sydney.”

“You can’t stop me from seeing my daughter. I need to see her, she’s all I have left in the world and it’s killing me being away from her.”

How would I ever be able to explain Sydney’s presence to Alex? And if he or the neighbors had seen the story in the news, how long would it take them to recognize Sydney, look at Molly and put two and two together? “I realize you miss her,” I said, my voice gritty with anger, “and I’m sorry if you’re no longer universally fawned over. I’m sure that sucks for you, but I’m not telling you where we are because I don’t want you screwing our lives up too. I swear, if you show up I’m going to”—
kill you
, I wanted to say,
stab you, shoot you, twist your head off your neck and smash it with an iron mallet—
“turn you in,” I said.

“You won’t,” she said smoothly. “I know you won’t. You care too much about her to let David take her.”

“I care too much about her to let
you
take her! You don’t want to test me, Sydney. I don’t care if I’m arrested; worst comes to worst Child Protective Services will take Jacqueline, which would mean at least she’d be safe.”

Sydney must’ve heard something in my voice, because she suddenly sounded annoyed. “Did you think I’d actually let you keep her? She’s my daughter.”

“She’s
not
your daughter,” I said. “You lost the right to her the minute you told the world she’d been kidnapped. You try and take her away, I’ll call the cops so fast they’ll be here before your nose job hits the door!” I slapped the phone shut and then slammed my fist against the dashboard. “Dammit!”

Was she coming here? Could she really find me? What if Pamela had told her where I was? I started the car and headed home. I could pack tonight, throw all our things into bags and run before Alex woke up, without saying goodbye. I’d take Star by surprise so she never
had a chance to reach full panic stage. How many Xanax did she have left? We’d had almost a three-month supply to start, but I knew she’d been overusing them. Oh God.

I turned onto our street, pulled into the driveway and parked. I pressed my forehead against the steering wheel, centering myself on the cold vinyl against my skin, then rose and walked into the house. Alex was at the computer in the living room, so I called a greeting to him, amazed at the seeming cheeriness of my voice. Ah yes, what a startlingly good liar I was.

I went upstairs to Star’s bedroom and found Molly on the floor with her, a sand pail over her head. “Her new favorite game,” Star said, as Molly pulled the bucket up, peeked at Star, grinning, then let it drop again. “Where’d she go? Where’d she go!”

Molly chortled rather maniacally and then pulled the pail up again as Star said, “There she is!” then turned to me. “It seems this will never get old for her.”

I knelt next to Molly and took her in my arms, and Molly let the pail fall again over her head. “Man, I wish we had a camera,” Star said.

I listened to the echo of Molly’s giggle inside the pail, looking over at Star’s beaming face, and suddenly felt my whole body slump.

Molly pulled the pail off her head and handed it up to me, her face questioning. “She wants you to wear it,” Star said, smiling, and I took the pail, looking down at Molly, a fierce despair snaking through my chest at the sight of the thin fringe of red along her scalp where the brown dye was starting to grow out. It made her look otherworldly, like her head was emitting light. A sign she was already returning to the woman who’d birthed her.

That night I set up my sketch pad next to Molly and started to outline her face, her bent knees, the curl of her chubby fingers. Such a perfectly shaped mouth she had, puckered like a flower. Perfect everything,
the tiny whorls in her ears, the wisps of damp hair on her forehead, and I studied them all in meticulous detail as I sketched, the way I studied landscapes I wanted to be sure to remember later, after I’d left them.

What would I do if Sydney suddenly showed up at the door? I’d have to check the news constantly, see if she did decide to leave. I had to realize this life could change any day, mentally prepare, but for now I couldn’t stand to think about any of it.

On a whim I started sketching images in the corners of my pad, Molly at three, at five, at fifteen, all with this same innate sweetness. Working on a jigsaw puzzle, practicing the art of tying a shoe, brushing her long hair.

Molly crawled to me and grabbed for the pencil and I shifted the pad and began meditatively adding myself to the last image, knowing full well how desperate this impulse was. She batted the pencil again and I reflexively snapped at her, “Don’t!” and pushed her hand away.

Her eyes widened, she stared at me, and suddenly her face crumpled. “Oh I’m sorry,” I whispered, “I’m sorry,” and I dropped the pencil and lifted her. I set her on my bed and lay with her, rubbing rhythmic circles on her belly and humming a tuneless chant in an attempt to mesmerize her. And it seemed to work; she stopped kicking her legs and watched my face with big eyes like she was trying to absorb me, or at least figure out what the hell I was trying to sing.

As we lay there, I tried to understand what might be going on inside her. Did she wonder sometimes how I’d come into her life? Did she try to figure out what had happened to Sydney, or was she as unconcerned and accepting as she seemed? And … oh I know how it sounds, I know, but this was the question I most wanted an answer to: Did she love me? When she reached her arms toward me, each time her face lit up as I entered the room, was that love or just recognition that I was someone who’d be willing to hold her?

Of course it shouldn’t matter at all. It wouldn’t change how I felt about her and anyway, how much actual
love
did babies feel? But somehow, somehow knowing she felt for me at least some of what a child should feel for her mother, it would justify everything I’d done,
legitimize it, even legitimize my feelings for her. Looking into each other’s eyes like this, it felt like the most intense, purest adoration I’d ever felt for and from another person. I’d built up all these defenses over years and years of hurt, but she’d gotten inside me anyway, taking up every vacant space. So it mattered because my love for Molly was now the most important thing, the only thing holding my millions of broken pieces together.

Alex’s sister arrived on the hottest day of the summer so far, one of those days that would have forecasters spouting statistics and environmentalists shaking their heads about melting glaciers. The house wasn’t air-conditioned; instead, Alex had a handful of old, metal-bladed fans that we carried from room to room, the damp air they blew in our faces not much more refreshing than stale breath.

But when I answered the front door, Molly in my arms, the woman behind it seemed cool and unruffled. She looked so much like Alex with her square chin and dark hair. Feminized, yes, and much thinner, the type of woman whose legs, when closed, would only touch at the knees and ankles, but still the likeness was disconcerting, like I was looking at Alex in drag.