Follow Me (30 page)

Not far from the pier, hidden by the buildings of the marina, is a pavilion with a carousel, still closed that early in the
morning, or otherwise I would have gone to ride on it. My grandmother used to bring me to the carousel when I was little.
I always chose the same white horse, hand-carved, with real horsehair for its mane and tail, while my grandmother preferred
to sit in the teacup and spin around and around. After the ride she’d stumble from the carousel laughing her growling laugh,
thrilled by the dizziness.

It was almost inevitable that my trip to the pier and this memory of my grandmother would merge in an elaborate dream I had
last night involving fish heads and carousel horses, most of which I’ve forgotten, except for the image of my grandmother
spinning down the Tuskee in a teacup, gripping the handrails, her hair blowing wild.

My grandmother must have loved the way dizziness washed thoughts and memories into a blur. As a young woman she spun through
her life the way she spun around in the teacup on the Bonville carousel. At pivotal moments she tended to act rashly, abandoning
her plans without bothering to consider alternatives, moving so quickly from the location of trouble that she would lose track
of how one thing was connected to another. Absorbed in the effort of escape, she’d forget that the same problems she’d left
behind had a tendency to reappear when she came to a stop.

According to my mother, the first few times my grandmother met her boyfriend Abe Boyle was in passing, when she was on her
way out the door, and she sized him up quickly, without much interest. My grandmother had other concerns and didn’t give much
thought to her daughter’s evolving romantic life. It doesn’t matter, though, what my grandmother thought of Abe when she first
met him. It was what she
didn’t
think of him that would end up having consequence.

Abe and Penelope met at a bar on a June night in 1974. They converged because one of Abe’s friends was the new boyfriend of
one of Penelope’s friends. Abe was the oldest among the group and the only one from out of town. The others were former high
school friends on summer break from college or working in the area. They had planned to hang out at the bar for the evening,
but they ended up taking the girls back to the room where Abe lived and making an impromptu party, the numbers swelling as
word got around, so by nine o’clock the group of six had grown to sixteen.

Some of the friends sat on the bed; others sat in a circle on the floor, passing around a bong and exchanging meaningful glances
in lieu of talk since the volume of the stereo was turned up too loud for anyone to hear beyond the music.

I assume it was without words that Penelope and Abe first became acquainted, communicating with their eyes, shyly at first,
then in a more relaxed way through the haze of smoke, and then seductively, my mother batting those famously long lashes of
hers, twirling a strand of her hair around her finger while she waited for her next drag on the bong, my father conveying
with his grin that he was sure the two of them belonged together.

Only when the last song had finished playing did my mother and father speak.

Nice party.

Mmm.

Sweet hash.

Mmm.

Hey.

Hey back.

You busy tomorrow?

Naw.

Wanna go somewhere?

Like where?

Oh, like anywhere.

Sure, why not.

Cool.

And all the while, even as they floated on the surface of a hazy, potted high and feigned a happy stupidity, their senses
were more keenly alert than ever, greedily absorbing everything they could about the other in an attempt to consign the whole
portrait to memory so that they’d have something substantial to savor, a vision detailed enough to satisfy the intense yearning
they expected to feel after they’d separated for the night.

When my mother reminisces about my father, she tends to grow irritable quickly.
Oh, he had that sweet smile,
she’ll say.
And he had that long hair, long auburn hair. He knew he was irresistible,
she continues with rising anger,
he thought he could do no wrong.
Even after thirty years, two marriages and two divorces, she still blames Abe for seducing her and then abandoning her when
she was pregnant. And she blames my grandmother for not giving her better advice about men.

The truth is, though my mother doesn’t realize this, my grandmother blamed herself for missing the warning signs. She would
go on blaming herself for the rest of her life. With what she saw as the distinctive color of his hair, the green of his eyes,
and the dimple in his cheek, he should have struck her as familiar. But when she saw him for the first time, she didn’t bother
to look carefully enough to recognize him. It took her months, she told me,
to put two and two together,
and by then it was too late: the damage had been done, and I was on my way into the world.

B
lur of deep night beyond the drops streaking the glass. Weight of the cat on her lap.
No stoppin’ once we start.
Penelope wanted to stay awake and listen to her mother sing. Her bad mother, bumped and bruised, who made her get into the
car and go away to nowhere. If only she could trade her for another mother, one who wasn’t bumped and bruised and who would
sit and watch television all night at home where she belonged. But what if she couldn’t find a mother who knew all the words
to all the songs ever written? Keep singing, Mama. She didn’t have to say it. Singing came from her mother like light filled
a room when the chain was pulled. Not always, though. Not after bedtime, and not that once when the bulb popped with a spark
and went out. That was a funny surprise, and after being afraid for a little while in the darkness, she was laughing. She
was laughing because her mother said, “Where are you, peanut?” and all the while she was right there behind her, all pajama’d
and washed and ready for bed.

She missed her bed so much all of a sudden, she wanted to cry. But she was too tired to cry. She was too tired not to be tired,
so she gave up trying to resist and fell asleep.

Sleep passed faster than she could count, and she was awake again. Awake was good but not so easy right away with the taste
in her mouth like the time she ate paste in Mrs. Murray’s nursery school class. Naughty girl! She was slapped on the face
for eating paste, the only time she’d ever been slapped, and it made her so mad she decided right then and there to hate Mrs.
Murray forever. She hated her now just thinking of that time with paste in her mouth, and she wanted her mama. Her mama was
there. Her mama was bumped and bruised, but she was still there. And she was hearing Penelope cry. It felt bad to cry. But
it also felt good because it was something that mattered, and her mother had to pay attention.

Her mother was driving and not listening to what her daughter wanted her to hear. Stop driving, Mama! Maybe if Penelope bawled
a little louder, her mother would pay attention. There, she was saying, “Shhh, sweetie pie.” But
shhh
was a stupid thing to say to a bawling girl, so she bawled some more, clutching at the cat on her lap.

Finally her mother pulled off the road into a parking lot. It was daytime again, and Miss Penelope Mole wanted breakfast with
milk — now! Okay, okay, she could have whatever she wanted if she was a good girl and waited in the car while her mama went
into the 7-Eleven. Being good was easier than being bad. But don’t tell anybody or you won’t get your way. She stroked the
cat hard between his ears so he would understand.

She almost always got her way, and when she didn’t, she bawled. There went her mother into the 7-Eleven to keep her from bawling.
It gave her a nice sense of being certain about things. She was certain that it was breakfast time. She was certain that she
was thirsty. She was certain that eating paste was not a reason to be slapped.

She wouldn’t be back at nursery school on Monday. It made her happy to picture the empty coat hook below her name and Mrs.
Murray wondering why she was late. Never to be slapped again, ha! But
never
wasn’t a big enough word to be what it meant.
Neverever
was better.

From somewhere far away behind the store came a new sound, a chicken squawking or a car honking. Then a big car the color
of a water faucet pulled in a few spaces away, and a woman in a puffy brown coat hurried from the car into the store, taking
quick steps, trot-trot, like a little pony.

A snowflake came out of the sky and landed on the windshield, turning right away into a drop of water. Soon there was another
snowflake, but that was all.

Waiting for her mother to come out of the 7-Eleven, Penelope wondered what the letters on the sign in the store window spelled.
S-A-L-T. S
made the hiss sound, she knew.
Apple
began with
A,
and
L
was just
L
. But what was that next letter? Think, think, think, she told herself, poking at her temple to make the thoughts come. To
her disappointment, she couldn’t remember the certain thought about the letter. Either she’d forgotten what it was or she
didn’t know it. There was an important difference between the two, between forgetting and not knowing.

She’d decided to give up on trying to figure it out when she saw her mama come out of the store smiling but not really smiling,
only pretending to, squeezing her lips to force them into the smiling shape and cover her broken teeth.

That mama. She wasn’t very good at pretending.

But she was good at getting breakfast.
Look,
she mouthed with her pretending lips. She was on the other side of the closed car window, holding the half-pint carton of
milk she’d pulled from the paper bag. Yes, look! It wasn’t just regular milk, it was chocolate milk, and a package of powdered
doughnuts, too!

Penelope turned the handle around and around. It was hard for her, but that was what she had to do to open the car window,
and she had to open the car window to take the carton of chocolate milk from her mother.

Yum.

But oops, she dropped the milk carton when the cat jumped. Bad cat! And there he went, being very bad and very fat, dragging
himself over the edge of the car window and out like a bouncing ball across the parking lot. He could go fast when he bounced,
bounce, bounce, bounce, his big belly flopping from side to side.

Penelope had enough time to cry out, “Stop!” before he disappeared behind the other car. Then she called his name: “Leo!”
He reappeared beside the front bumper, blinked like the lazy cat he was, and licked his chops, as if he had just finished
eating the first course of a meal and was ready to move on to the next. Penelope glared at him, telling him with her eyes
that he had to come back, there was nothing else to do that would be right. But then because he was a selfish, stupid cat,
he did the wrong thing, darting around the corner of the 7-Eleven and disappearing into the woods.

Penelope would mark the beginning of her new life not with the car ride but with Leo the cat running away, a terrible loss that would have broken
her heart if she hadn’t been so furious at him. It was horrible enough that he’d chosen the woods over their nice warm car.
But even worse was the way he’d looked at her, denying that he had any reason to be grateful for all she’d done on his behalf.
That was why she wouldn’t let herself be heartbroken because of him, and neither would she forgive her mother for all the
trouble she’d caused.

For Sally, though, her new start had begun earlier, with the fist that slammed into her mouth. That she could have had the
broken teeth capped by any capable dentist didn’t occur to her. The damaged face staring back from the mirror in her bathroom
and from the rearview in the car and from the glare in the store window was hers to keep, and if she now resembled the Raggedy
Ann she’d had as a child, well, wasn’t that appropriate? She had treasured that doll for years.

Between Tuskee and the 7-Eleven along the country route, she’d covered only a little more than sixty miles, driving at a snail’s
pace because the curving dark road was slick with ice. And when exhaustion had gotten the better of her, she’d pulled over
into the lot behind an abandoned gas station, shut off the engine, and tried to doze. She thought she wouldn’t actually fall
asleep, but the next thing she knew there was a pale light above the treetops indicating that several hours had passed.

She had no idea where she was heading, only that she would follow the river until there were no passable roads, and then she
would find another road and keep driving, and eventually she would reach the place where she wanted to be. She would have
driven straight through to noon if her daughter hadn’t woken up and demanded her breakfast. To pay for that breakfast she’d
taken a dollar from the purse containing Mason Jackson’s money. She’d saved that money for years. She’d been planning to keep
on saving it, and here she’d gone and used it to buy milk and those goddamn powdered doughnuts.