Find Me I'm Yours (26 page)

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!

“Are you fucking kidding me?!?!?”

“Mags, watch your language.”

“What? FUCK THAT! I've always believed I wasn't worthy of having someone, or I'd get a taste of it and then they'd leave because I was CURSED. Are you telling me it's all bullshit?”

“No, the curse is real.”

“How can you even say that?” I stood up and paced around my small room, which now felt like a closet. “How could you do that to me???” I screamed.

“Calm down, Maggie.” I could tell how scared my mom was—she never called me Maggie.

“And all this time you had us hating Dad???”

“I NEVER did that.” She put her cup down on the nightstand. “I always encouraged you to have a relationship with him. I never bad-mouthed him once, did I?”

“You didn't have to. All we knew was that he left us. This is so fucked up!”

“I'm sorry. Your dad and I both thought it'd be best that way since for years he was on the road playing and wasn't around at all.”

I was shaking. “Did you even TRY to fix things? Did you stop seeing the guy when Dad found out?”

She shrugged. “It was just too late by then.”

“I don't buy that at all. So this whole time Dad's been the victim, not you? How could you have thrown that curse bullshit on me all my life when you're the one who fucked up your own marriage??”

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't hear another word. I was so exhausted from letting my heart and trust be continually trampled on. From being drugged, cheated on, stolen from, lied to, and betrayed. And now by my own freakin' mother.

“I gotta get out of here,” I said, as I grabbed a coat and my keys and put Boo and Toupee on their leashes.

“I'm so sorry,” my mother said, looking dejected. “I guess this means you're not coming home with me tomorrow?”

“Seriously?!?!?!?”

How could I go home when I didn't have one?

Anywhere.

DAY 11—EARLY MORNING

Isn't rain supposed to be cleansing? Instead, it felt like the sky was crying giant tears. But they were still smaller than my own. Boo and Toupee and I walked. And walked. In a downpour. For hours. Past Coco and Blake's, which was as dark and empty as I felt, down the streets of Silverlake. Looking for signs. For messages. How could anything have meaning anymore when my whole life had been based on a lie?

I walked some more until I found myself in Echo Park, at Jason's front door. I rang the bell, not really expecting him to answer, as it was now 4:00 in the morning. But he did. Again, wrapped in the quilt I had made for him.

“Mags, are you OK?”

“Not so much.”

“Come in. Let me get you guys some towels.” He came back and wrapped a large towel around my shoulders, then dried off the girls. They were happy to see him.

“Would you mind watching them for a few days? I have to go out of town.”

“Absolutely. Sure. Come here.” He put his arm around me and led me to his fireplace. He turned on the gas and flames shot up around a fake log.

“What's wrong?” Jason asked. “Where are you going?”

I couldn't answer. I was literally dumbstruck. Jason took me in his arms. It felt so good. I cried a bit, then asked, “Do you have $100.00 I can borrow? Just until I get back to town and pick up my paycheck?”

“Of course.” He went into his bedroom to get it. It suddenly dawned on me that someone might be in there with him and now, that didn't even really matter. I was at the door when he returned and handed me five $20.00 bills.

“I gotta go. Thanks for the loan and for watching the kids.”

“Sure. Uh, it's still raining hard. Can I give you a ride home?”

I didn't think I could ever set foot in that apartment again. Being furious with S.H.A.R.I. for unknowingly trying to hijack Mr. WTF paled in comparison to all that went down after.

“I'm not going home.”

“Well, let me take you wherever you're going.”

“OK.”

I was quiet during the whole car ride downtown. Jason tried to get me to talk, but I just couldn't. The only word I said was “NO” when he asked, “Is this about me?”

When Jason pulled up in front of the Greyhound bus station he said, “Hang in there, Mags. You're gonna be OK.”

And I wondered if I ever would be.

DAY 11—MORNING

I woke up smelling like ham. I couldn't tell if it was courtesy of the stench emanating from the bus station restaurant, or the fact that 99 percent of the people waiting to depart, myself included, looked like they hadn't showered in days.

I was shocked that I had fallen asleep at all on what were probably voted the most uncomfortable chairs in all of Los Angeles—or perhaps in the entire nation. All metal, all wiry. Did someone really think that if they were made in assorted cheerful colors, no one would notice how torturous they were to sit on for more than two minutes?

On top of checkerboard imprints on my cheeks—both ass and face—I had one of those hangover-y headaches from too much crying.
Let's Make a Deal
, blaring from the large TV screens that dotted the station, didn't help much. A commercial for
The Talk
came on. On the rare occasions I've seen the commercials for that show, the hosts are
always laughing
. Laughing, laughing, laughing. What is so fucking funny, ladies?!?!

I looked at my phone to see what time it was, and how much longer a wait I had until my bus left at 6:10 a.m.

OOOO. MMMM. GGGG!!! It was 9:37!! I had fallen asleep for FOUR AND A HALF FREAKIN' HOURS. I ran to the window to see if I could change my ticket. The man/woman behind the counter (I so couldn't tell which. I'm all for gender fluidity, so I'll just call him/her THEM). Them said that I had not only missed my 6:10 a.m. bus, but also the 9:30 a.m. bus. At least them let me exchange my ticket for the next bus, but it wasn't leaving until 12:30 p.m.

I wandered into the ladies' room, which might as well have been backstage in a dressing room at some Broadway show. Well, some skanky regional, out-of-town-before-it-hits-Broadway show. One woman was fully naked, wiping herself down with wet paper towels. Another was fixing her hair with a curling iron and a lot of Aqua Net, and a third was applying makeup with a druggy-speedy-shaky hand. My last costar had her pants off and was mending a hole in the crotchal area.

I splashed water on my face and got out of there as quickly as I could. What could I do for almost three hours to keep myself distracted? I couldn't very well sit on one of the wire chairs and replay over and over what had happened last night. And I couldn't bear to see
The Talk
ladies LAUGHING one more fucking time. So I took to the streets.

Walking has always been calming to me. Especially in NYC, where, for some reason, it's the best place to get some “alone time,” even when surrounded by constant throngs and activity. In L.A. it's the opposite. When I'm walking and pass the occasional person, I feel totally out there and exposed.

Downtown was a ripe canvas for street art, which up until recently, I had barely noticed, and now, felt like a best friend. Every corner I turned, I found myself face to face with some masterpiece:

But even walking through the urban museum wasn't enough to keep at bay the images that were flashing in my mind like stop-action still frames—Whitney with S.H.A.R.I. doing shots together. Me, a sad-sack reflection in a sexy strip club's mirror. And that was just the short film before the feature presentation. Mom lying. Dad lying. Mom cheating. Dad leaving. Me and Cooper cutting off Dad. The betrayals. The fiction.

And then, OH BOY, wouldn't ya know…. Like it had been happening from the start of the hunt, from the first second I began really seeing the street art and paying attention to the messages, I came upon a piece that SHOUTED AT ME.

Yeah, thanks.

I continued past abandoned buildings and revitalized lofts, new cafés, and a stall at Grand Central Market called EggSlut. Suddenly I came upon a wall covered with layers of street art. Only this one had two things that set it apart from anything I had ever seen before.

The Two Things that Set the Wall Apart from Anything I Had Ever Seen Before

By Mags Marclay

1). At the top was a welcome sign that said:

THIS IS YOUR WALL. Paint or paste anything you want on it. 100% legal. 100% raw. Streaming live 24/7 on
www.thisisyourwall.com
.

2). At the bottom, lining the wall, there were cans of spray paint on the ground. An open invitation for anyone's use.

Was this for real? Or was it a trap, and the second I started spraying, I'd be hauled off to jail or slapped with a big, phat phine for vandalizing private property? And who was kickin' back, watching the activity 24/7 on the website? The whole thing felt a little, uh…

… (thanks, Blake).

But at the same time, it was calling to me.

I looked it up and saw it was legit.

www.thisisyourwall.com

What did I have to lose, #thisisyourwall? So I waved to the camera, picked up one of the cans, and felt its cold cylinder in my hands. I pushed down the nozzle and the spray left the can in a powerful hiss. I would add my mark to the already full wall, and paint what was on my mind.

And at that point, it was simply surrender.

DAY 11—AFTERNOON

“Do you think if I put a license plate on the front door of my apartment it would give me a feeling of transience?” That was just one of the, oh, about two million questions the chattiest woman in all the land sitting next to me on the bus asked. She was in her late '70s (I think?), and wouldn't stop talking to me, saying random things like, “Joan did very well in the spelling bee. She misspelled martyr, but so did runner-up Tammy Cole of St. Stephens, Hazlewood.”

I was as sweet and cheerful to her as I could muster during the first hour. Then I couldn't take it any longer. Luckily my earbuds happened to be in the pocket of the jacket I threw on before I had run out of the apartment last night, and thankfully they were not waterlogged from all the rain. But not as luckily or thankfully, the minute I turned on some music, my phone died. I kept pretending I was listening, tapping the beat out on my lap, and whenever she started talking to me again, which was often, I'd even fake sing along out loud with whatever song was not playing.