After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away (12 page)

It’s cold tonight. Our breaths are steaming. There’s snow everywhere, but out here by the golf course, on Trina’s street with the fancy name, Palmer Woods Pass, there’s more snow than in town, now in the dusk it looks sort of bluish, long, graceful hills like dunes, like something sculpted. And Trina’s house she doesn’t so much as glance at is so beautiful. From the street you can see Christmas lights winking inside: white and blue. A tall Christmas tree in the front window like a display window. Every house I’ve seen on Palmer Woods Pass is large like the Hollands’ house and new-looking, lavishly decorated for Christmas, so it looks like they’re floating in an ocean of snow.

I tell Trina her house is beautiful. Trina mumbles what sounds like “Sure.” Like she’s embarrassed or—who knows why?—pissed at me.

Maybe because it’s so obvious? That the house Trina lives in is beautiful? It’s like “Well, duh,” Trina wants me to know.

Or maybe Trina is embarrassed she’s a rich man’s daughter. Not like the crowd she hangs with.

Why we’re here I’m not sure. Trina’s mom kept calling her on her cell, leaving messages more and more frantic:
Trina, where are you? Trina, you know you are grounded until Sunday. Trina, if I don’t hear from you, I am going to report you as a runaway to the state police; they will bring you home in a squad car,
which made us all laugh. Trina says her mom is crazy but she’d better check in, calling the cops on her is the kind of crazy thing her mom might do. But when Trina tried to call her mom back, the line was always busy. So T-Man has dropped us off, I’m not sure if he’s coming back to pick us up. If I call Aunt Caroline, she’ll be upset, she doesn’t like me spending so much time with Trina, not that she knows anything about Trina. When I’m late getting home, Trina advises me how to talk to Aunt Caroline: always calm and polite to get your way, never brattish; adults are waiting for you to be brattish so they can attack. Already I’ve used the excuse that I’m doing my homework with Trina Holland because her dad has a special computer for research. When I tell Aunt Caroline this, she is always eager to believe.

“Into the belly of the beast, baby. Hold your breath.”

Trina keeps nudging me in the back, pushing me forward. We’re entering her house by a side door, into a kitchen where lights are dimmed. Just a light above the most beautiful stove I have ever seen, and another light recessed in the ceiling above a breakfast nook. The Hollands’ kitchen is twice the size of the McCartys’ kitchen, like something you’d see in a showroom. There’s a smell here of burn and scorch and a sweetish rancid smell like something has spoiled. The sink is filled with scummy gray water, plates are soaking there, and more plates are stacked on the counter. The door of the dishwasher is down, but the cleaned plates haven’t been unloaded.

On a kitchen chair is a messy stack of newspapers, takeout food packages, grocery bags. I step on something that turns out to be a fork. It’s weird, in a kitchen so modern and obviously expensive, that trash is accumulating.

Trina kicks the fork across the floor. Pokes me in the back, to keep me moving.

In my ear hissing, “Shhh!” Like we’re burglars breaking into Trina’s own house.

The house is so large and sprawling, and we hear voices in the distance that might be TV voices or a woman talking on a phone. Trina slips ahead of me now, tugging at my wrist. The air inside the house is hot as a greenhouse. After the freezing air outside, my cheeks burn. The woman’s voice is louder, shrill and incredulous as if she’s arguing with someone. Trina pulls me to the stairs covered in plush maroon carpeting just as a woman drifts past a doorway into the living room, not noticing us, she’s so intent on her cell phone. All I can see of this woman is she’s about Aunt Caroline’s age, and her hair is a fake-looking jet black fastened around her head in fussy little combs, and she’s wearing some kind of silk robe that falls to her ankles and causes her to stumble. Behind her is the living room with a cathedral ceiling, skylights. At the farther end is the twelve-foot Christmas tree decorated in white and blue winking lights.

Trina whispers in my ear, “Come
on
.” I’m surprised, she’s pulling me up the stairs with her instead of speaking with her mother. I’d been thinking the purpose of returning to her house was to check in with Mrs. Holland so she wouldn’t call the cops on Trina. “I need some things. You stand lookout.” Trina is wearing a bulky jacket with a hood, she could be a boy of eleven or twelve. She switches on the light in her room and runs to a closet to rummage through shelves and drawers, tossing things behind her onto the floor. I’m staring at Trina’s room. It’s large with several windows, but it looks as if a whirlwind has rushed through it. Everywhere underfoot are clothes, underwear, shoes, boots, pillows, schoolbooks, stuffed animals. Trina’s pretty white wicker bed hasn’t been made, bedclothes and towels are twisted together. There’s the sweet smoky smell of pot mixed with a sharper smell like dirty laundry and old sneakers. The walls are almost entirely covered in rock band posters and photos, tacked on top of one another. On the wall above Trina’s desk are Polaroid pictures of Crow on his Harley-Davidson, in a black leather jacket, dark glasses. His spiky black hair is longer than I’ve seen it. He’s wearing fingerless black gloves. In one of the pictures, Trina in low-slung jeans and a tiny red halter top is nestled in the crook of Crow’s arm, her arm slung around his shoulders.

Trina sees me staring. She says, “Oh, man. That guy is just so totally, totally sexy.”

Trina has shoved a few articles of clothing into her jacket pockets—sweater, panties, socks. Plus what looks like a blue plastic Baggie containing something loose.

I don’t ask what this is. If Trina wants to tell me, she will.

Coming downstairs, I can see into the living room to the farther end, where the twelve-foot Christmas tree is winking white and blue lights in the window. The Hollands’ house is decorated for Christmas like something in a magazine. On the fireplace mantel are sprigs of evergreen. Pots of poinsettias with petals wilting in the heat, more Christmas lights, gilt-framed mirrors. In the midst of this, like somebody drifting in a dream, Trina’s mother comes swaying in gripping a cell phone in one hand and a wineglass in the other.

Trina says in a sharp, teasing voice, “Say hi to my mom, Jenna.”

Mrs. Holland has stopped dead in her tracks. She’s staring and blinking at us as if she’s having trouble seeing.

I mumble hello as Trina prods me forward, saying in the same sharp, teasing voice, “Mom, this is my friend Jenna.”

“Jenna. Why, hello…”

Mrs. Holland squints at me as if my face is supposed to be familiar to her but she can’t remember it. The way she’s swaying upright reminds me of a cobra I’ve seen on TV. There is something spade-shaped and flat about her face, like a cobra’s. And her eyes are small and close set. Her eyebrows have been plucked thin. Her face is pretty but creased and puffy beneath the eyes, and her hair looks like a glamor wig. What’s shocking is the sash of her pink silk kimono is loose, so I can see a ridge of fat at her waist and part of a sagging breast sickly white like a mollusk.

Trina whispers in my ear, reckless now her mother is so close, “‘Belly of the beast’—see what I mean?” and slips past me, and past her mother, like a small child daring to run away, leaving her mother and me to stare at each other.

Mrs. Holland is frowning at me, asking what is my name? who are my parents? where do I live? am I in Trina’s class at the high school? and I mumble answers, trying to smile politely and not to sound rattled the way I am when Trina plays some trick like this with a guy, practically shoving me into him, dancing away giggling what sounds like
Here’s Jenna, she wants to suck your dick,
except you can’t be sure what Trina has said, you have to pretend you haven’t heard.

(I can’t be angry at Trina, she does this with anybody she likes. Even some of the guys. It’s how you know Trina Holland likes you, this kind of teasing.)

Mrs. Holland doesn’t listen to much of what I say, she’s chattering about something in a hurt, girlish voice. I can understand why Trima slipped away. Mrs. Holland’s voice would give you a headache in five minutes. She’s complaining about Trina, I guess, or about somebody who was supposed to “cater” a party for her but has canceled at the last minute: “She knew this relative was dying, he’s been dying for months, it’s her professional responsibility to fulfill her obligation to a customer, don’t my feelings matter too?”

Mrs. Holland has forgotten she was speaking on the cell phone, she’s startled by a shrill little voice squawking out of it, drops the cell phone, grabs at it but misses it, it clatters to the floor and breaks into three pieces, somehow the wineglass slips through her fingers too and shatters on the floor. Mrs. Holland cries, “Oh oh oh! Oh,
no!
” Dark-red wine has splattered up onto the beautiful silk kimono. Nasty-looking pieces of glass are glittering on the marble floor. I don’t know where Trina has gone, somewhere in the living room, but for sure, she isn’t in a hurry to investigate her mother’s cries and what the accident is.

I tell Mrs. Holland it’s all right. I’ll take care of the broken glass.

Mrs. Holland leans heavily on me as I help her to a chair in a corner of the foyer, sobbing like an infuriated child. The fumes on her breath smell like lighter fluid. I stoop to pick up the pieces of the cell phone, which is now completely silent, and as many pieces of the broken wineglass as I can find, and I mop up the spilled wine with paper napkins. Mrs. Holland doesn’t seem to notice; she’s peering at me suspiciously, asking suddenly, “Who are
you
? Do I know
you
?”

“I—I’m Jenna. Trina’s friend from high school.”

“But I don’t know you, do I? What are you doing in my house?”

This is scary. I’m wishing that Trina would come back.

I don’t even know what to say.
Trina brought me here? Why, I don’t know any more than you do, Mrs. Holland.

Mrs. Holland calls, “Trina? Where are you? Tree-eena!” She’s so drunk, it’s hard to know if she is furious or sad or her heart is broken or mostly she’s just disgusted and wants to blame me.

“Where is my daughter? Why is my daughter always gone? Who are my daughter’s friends? All that I’ve done for that child, why doesn’t she love me when I love her so much?” Mrs. Holland is gripping my hand so hard, I have to pry her fingers off, trying not to panic.

“Hey, Mom: chill.”

Trina comes sauntering into the foyer, the hood of her jacket pulled up so her face is half covered. She’s carrying her backpack, which looks kind of bulky and heavy. “We’re leaving now—g’night.”

“But—Trina! Don’t you have homework? Both of you?”

Trina’s walking away, pulling me with her. Like she’s talking to some mental defective in a loud flat voice: “Mom, see, I explained. Jenna’s dad is this engineering genius, he’s got this supernew awesome computer, he lets us use for research? For, like, my earth science class? So—”

We’re at the front door. Trina opens it, shoves me out into the cold air, which hits my face like a wall. At first my skin hurts; then I’m grateful for the cold, after the hothouse heat of Mrs. Holland’s house. Behind us Trina’s mother is calling plaintively for Trina to come back, has Trina forgotten she’s grounded all this week—

Trina slams the door shut. Trina’s laughing, so I guess things are okay, but halfway up the front walk she turns on me, angry. “Why’d you do that? She’s not your mother.”

Not my mother.
These words hurt. I’m glad Trina takes no notice.

On the snowy street we’re waiting for somebody, I guess. Our breaths are steaming. Trina says, relenting, “See, baby, I got the goods.” There are several bottles in her backpack, and she pulls one out: Parrot Bay Puerto Rican rum. Trina screws off the top, takes a long swallow, wipes her mouth on her sleeve the way a guy would do, and passes the bottle to me. The liquid is so strong going down, it feels like flame in my mouth, throat, chest. I’m trying not to have a coughing fit when T-Man reappears in his black SUV with the red lightning bolts on the sides, skidding and braking for Trina and me to climb inside.

This is the night Trina says,
Know what, you guys could help me out real well,
and the guys ask how and Trina says,
Kill my mom for me, put the beast out of her misery,
and the guys are like
Whaaaat?
not knowing if they’ve heard right, and Trina says, laughing,
Just kidding, guys.

Trina’s my friend, I am never lonely now.

24.

Jenna! Come downstairs, honey.

Mom is calling up the stairs. It’s Christmas Eve!

Strange that I’m so sleepy. My eyelids feel glued shut. Mom’s voice sounds far away. When I try to answer her and run to the stairs, my legs are tangled in something: bedclothes?

Christmas Eve! For days Mom and I have been decorating the tree. So many beautiful ornaments, and some I’ve made myself in art class. Last week Mom let me pick out the tree at the nursery, a Douglas fir it’s called. The needles smell so wonderful, like the fresh air of a forest. Beneath the tree are our presents. I love Christmas presents even more than birthday presents because there are so many of them and because of the way they look in their shining wrapping paper. Like the Christmas tree sparkling and winking with glass ornaments, silver tinsel, red and green colored lights. And the fluffy white angel at the peak.

Each of the presents marked “
JENNA
” is fascinating to me, like a riddle in one of my picture books when I was a little girl. There are presents from “Mom & Dad,” including a big square box that rattles when I shake it—I can’t guess what’s inside and Mom won’t even hint what it is; there are heaps of presents from “Grandma,” from “Aunt Caroline & Uncle Dwight,” from other relatives. My present for Mom looks kind of small, not much larger than a necktie box. The salesclerk wrapped it in silver paper, but I marked it myself in red ink “
TO MOM FROM JENNA
.” It’s a purple velvet shawl sprinkled with gold stars. Daddy took me shopping, but I bought Mom’s present with my own money. (Mom helped me buy our present for Daddy, a hand-knit sweater from Scotland. Anything Daddy might really like is so expensive.) So many beautiful shawls the salesclerk showed me, I had a hard time choosing. I asked Daddy to help, but Daddy was talking on his cell phone and didn’t want to be interrupted. Like Daddy has other things to think about that mean more to him than buying a Christmas present for Mom.