How to Be Lost (14 page)

“Is the rent cheap?” I asked.

“Cheapest in town. You looking?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“I could introduce you to the landlady later.”

Finally, something was happening, even if it was leading to a lease on a crappy apartment. “Sounds great,” I said.

“You got a job?” asked the withered woman in the basement offices of the Wilma.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“Call me Diane,” she said, taking a drag of her Virginia Slim. “What’s your job?”

“I’m a piano player at Cee Cee’s Cocktails,” I said.

“Cee Cee,” said Diane, practically spitting the name.

“It’s on Front Street….”

Diane stubbed out her cigarette. “I know where Cee Cee’s is,” she said. Ellie and I followed her into an old elevator lined in striped wallpaper. Diane closed the elevator door with a shove and sank onto a stool in the corner of the elevator: a furry stool with gold tassels.

“Is Caroline going to be on my floor?” said Ellie, giddily. She seemed excited to be friends with me.

“Same bathroom even,” said Diane. “Same phone.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

Ellie leaned toward me. “We have a shared bathroom on the second floor,” she said. “It’s not bad, really. There are only two of us. Well, three now!” She smiled. “And there’s a pay phone in the hallway,” she added.

On the second floor, Diane heaved herself to her feet and opened the elevator. “Home sweet home,” she rasped.

The hallway was carpeted in an orange plush. Two framed pictures hung crookedly: a monkey clinging to a branch, and a litter of kittens in a basket. I smelled tomato sauce. “This is the bathroom,” said Diane, opening a door into a small but tidy room with a shower, toilet, and sink.

“That’s my potpourri,” said Ellie, “and my little starfish soaps.” My head was reeling; Ellie had collected starfish on the beach when we were small.

“Apartment 204,” said Diane, opening a door directly across the hall from the bathroom. I made my way inside. The apartment was already filled with brown furniture. It was made up of three rooms: a living room, a tiny kitchen with a weird latticework wall, and a bedroom with a sink in it. “Used to be a dentist’s office,” noted Diane.

“Oh,” I said.

“Look at the view,” said Ellie.

The view was stunning. Although my windows were on either side of the marquee, I could see the mountains and the Clark Fork River.

“It’s a month-to-month lease, right?” I said.

“Sure, honey,” said Diane.

“You are going to love it here,” said Ellie, clapping her hands together. Her actions felt false to me, contrived. But I just went with the moment. I didn’t have anything to go home to, really, and maybe this girl was my sister after all. I tried to ignore the uneasy feeling in my stomach. Maybe, as my mother had told me, I was just afraid of being happy.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

That night, after I moved my things into the Wilma, Ellie and I bought a bottle of wine and a big sandwich to split from the market down the street. I paid. We sat in my bedroom, watching the moon over the mountains. Ellie drank the wine, but barely ate any of the sandwich. “I’m so tired,” she said, “but I’ve got to work later.”

“Eat something,” I said.

“I’m just not so hungry,” she said.

“So what brought you to Montana?”

She sipped her wine. “Daven,” she said, simply.

We sat in silence. I was breathless, wondering if Ellie was going to touch me, curl up with her head in my lap as she had so long ago. “What’s your real name?” I said.

She looked at me. Her eyes were dull now. “I can’t—” said Ellie.

“Yes you can,” I said. I put my hand on her knee.

She stood. “I’m really tired,” she said.

I held my breath, but I knew I had to give her time. “Sure,” I said. Ellie stood up and hugged me. Her body felt unfamiliar, but warm.

It was only when I brought my deposit check to Diane that I found out Ellie made a hundred bucks as soon as I signed on the dotted line.

T
HE DAY
B
ERNARD’S
daughter drowned was bright and cloudless. Five-year-old Agnes awoke early, running into Bernard and Sarah’s bedroom and yelling, “Beach! Beach!” Sarah sighed and rolled over, and Bernard climbed from bed and pulled on his bathrobe.

“After coffee,” he told her.

Bernard and Agnes sat in the kitchen of the Tybee cottage, planning the day. They would go to the Breakfast Club for waffles, and then fish before lunch at the Crab Shack Restaurant. Little Agnes loved the Crab Shack, which had holes in the center of the tables for throwing shrimp shells. After lunch, they would head to the beach until dinnertime.

Sarah was still in bed. “Momma!” said Agnes, standing at the foot of the bed with her hands on her hips.

“Oh for the love of Christ,” said Sarah. Bernard winced. Her brash language had lost its charm for him.

“Why don’t you meet us there?” he said.

“Order me a waffle, will you?” said Sarah, and then she rolled into her pillow.

Bernard and Agnes walked along the beach to the Breakfast Club. Bernard’s family cottage was the second one built on Tybee Island; condominiums and motels surrounded it now.

At the diner, there was a wait, so Bernard and Agnes took stools at the counter. “Who do you think is the happiest man in this room?” asked Bernard. He watched Agnes as she looked around, taking in the ruddy-faced fishermen, the college students on break. “Him,” she said finally, pointing with her little finger at the fry cook named Will, who winked at her and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Will had a ponytail, a Harley tattoo, and a soft spot for Agnes.

“Wrong, darlin’,” said Bernard, touching her curls with his palm. “It’s me.”

“You’re weird, Daddy,” said Agnes, sipping her orange juice.

Sarah arrived, disheveled and begging for coffee. After breakfast, they stopped at Chu’s for bait, and then walked down Tybrisa Street to the beach. The fishing pier was deserted, save for one young boy with a large fishing rod. Sarah unfolded her chair on the sand. Agnes stayed with her father, and he helped her bait her hook.

“I’m cold,” said Sarah, after about an hour. She had left her chair and walked out to the end of the pier. Her feet were bare. “And,” she said, “this book is dull.” She held up the book, a history of Tybee. Her nose was pink, and freckles stood out on her cheeks. She wore an old cardigan around her shoulders.

“One more cast?” said Bernard. He was getting chilly, too, and nothing was biting. The water was dark underneath the pier, and the boy had left.

“I’m not cold,” said Agnes.

“Not long until the Crab Shack, A,” said Sarah, swatting Agnes on her behind. Agnes wore flip-flops, a plastic visor, and a green terrycloth sweatshirt over her bathing suit.

“I’m not cold,” Agnes said again. She brought her rod back and cast, a perfect sweep into the water. Bernard looked up and saw clouds swelling. He wished he could walk over to Doc’s Bar and have a pint of beer with Sarah. They could wait out the storm and then go back to the big house and make love, the way they had before Agnes.

“We’ve got to go, baby,” he said.

“I don’t want to,” said Agnes.

Irritation shot through him. “Suit yourself,” said Sarah. “Come on, Bear.”

“OK,” said Bernard. He began to pack up his bait. “Don’t want to be without you,” he said to Agnes, but he left, walking slowly back to the beach along the pier.

When he looked back, she was smiling, running after him.

On the beach that afternoon, Agnes built sand castles while Sarah and Bernard dozed. There was a man flying an enormous kite by the rocks. He needed both hands to control the red and blue expanse of fabric. “It’s like an extra cloud,” said Agnes, shading her eyes and looking up at the kite.

“Don’t go near the rocks, love,” said Sarah, her eyes closed. They had drunk wine with lunch, and they were drowsy.

“I’m not,” said Agnes. The wet sand coated her legs, and the wind whipped her hair. The sun broke through the clouds.

When Bernard opened his eyes, Agnes was no longer sitting in front of him. There was an imprint of her in the sand, and her castle was tall and lumpy. Bernard stood quickly and called her name.

Sarah sat up like a shot. “Where is she?” she said, but Bernard was running toward the rocks. “How long was I asleep?” said Sarah. “How long was I asleep?” she repeated.

The man with the kite was on the other side of the rocks now. Bernard yelled for Agnes, and the man came over. “She was right there,” he said, “I saw her.” He pointed to the edge of the rocks. Waves smashed against the place. Agnes was nowhere, but Bernard discovered one flip-flop tangled in seaweed.

They found her body later that day. She had slipped and hit her head, falling into the water. Sarah clawed at the police officer who came to tell them. She screamed, “It’s not true! It’s not true!” but Bernard knew it was true.

I
DID NOT
see Ellie for over a week. I heard her stepping off the elevator, late at night. The walls in the building were thick, but sometimes I heard Daven’s voice. He sounded angry, which made me nervous.

I went to Albertson’s Supermarket. The line was long, and I had a while to think. I thought about the day my parents brought Ellie home from the hospital. She was born in February, and had been wrapped in blankets to protect her from the winter wind.

Madeline and I stood in the hallway of our house, waiting for her. We heard the car pull up, and the laughter of our parents. They had been happy once. The front door opened, and icy air hit my face. They bustled in, my parents and my new sister. My father took my mother’s coat.

I remember looking at Ellie for the first time. She was ugly, and her hair was dark. My mother bent down and said, “Caroline, it’s your sister, Ellie.” I reached toward her, and Ellie grabbed my finger. Her grip was tight. Her eyes were big and blue. She blinked like a fish. She held on as if she’d never let go, but then she did.

from the desk of
AGNES FOWLER

Dear Johan,
There is a masturbator in the library! It shouldn’t be so exciting, but we’re in that end-of-winter time where everyone is just looking for something to happen. You would think by now that it would be warm. Well, maybe YOU wouldn’t.

By the way, I very much enjoyed your last letter. I am flattered that all the Explosives Engineers liked my portrait, but maybe you could keep it to yourself from now on? Just a thought. Also, your poem, “The Stars in June,” was divine. And you found so many words to rhyme with “June.” I never would have thought of “saloon.” But then, I’m not a poet, like you.

It was a graduate student who discovered the masturbator. The student was on the third floor, looking for a book on the Aboriginal tribes of Western Australia. (These people have been persecuted for generations, she informed me.) And right there, in the 994.004s, was a man pleasuring himself! The graduate student, Wendy Weekham, was very upset. She ran downstairs to the Reference Desk and told the student worker the whole story.

Well! A team (made up quickly of student workers and Deanna, the Science Librarian) went right to the third floor, but the masturbator was nowhere to be found. The library went into lockdown. It was just like a movie: we had to eat those tuna sandwiches from the vending machine for lunch, and the police came and looked at every square inch of the library. The masturbator had escaped.

Well, what with all the excitement, I did not get a chance to speak with Frances about the Love Match Cruise. I know the deadline is very soon, so I will try to have some news in my next letter.

Johan, I would like you to know something about me. There is something wrong with my brain. I don’t know how else to say it. I’m not stupid, it’s the opposite, actually. I think too much, that’s what my father always said. Maybe I’ll just answer Number Eight, and you can see what you think and if you still want to meet me in person.

8. Worst Nightmare
Ever since I can remember, I have the same dream/nightmare:

I am asleep, and there are two other people sleeping next to me. They smell like applesauce. I’m in a room, somewhere warm. It’s raining outside.

When I have this vision, I ache for these two other people, though I am not sure who they are. They look like me—they are my sisters. But my father insisted I did not have any sisters. I am an only child, and yet I can hear the breathing of these two people. I can close my eyes and feel them, beside me. I want to open my eyes, and see who is next to me, but I am too afraid. I lie there, in the night.

Sometimes, I will be in my own living room, reading one of my books (my name is right there, written on the inside flap: Property of Agnes Fowler), and a slow knowledge comes over me. I do not belong where I am, and I am not Agnes Fowler. I am someone else, and there is a different life waiting for me to return.

Johan, what do you make of all this?

Sincerely Yours,
Agnes

P.S. Here is another Sexy Portrait, but please do not share it among the other Explosives Engineers.

F
ROM THE PAY
phone in the hallway, I called Winnie. “So I got an apartment,” I said.

“In Montana? What are you, insane?” Winnie’s voice made me smile.

“Have you found a job?” I asked.

“Peggy’s gonna be a model,” said Winnie.

“No!”

“Yes. She got herself an agent and all that. And Kit’s got me working at the auto shop, but I hate it.”

“I got a job,” I said.

“Girl, doing what?”

“Playing the piano.”

“Excuse me?”

“Playing the piano. At a nightclub,” I said.

“Are you going to stay there, in Montana? You’ve already got a life, Caroline, don’t forget it.”

“I know.”

“And what about your long-lost sister?”

The phone was near Ellie’s door, so I whispered, “I’ve met someone, and she looks like she could be Ellie, but I guess I don’t know.”

“What were you expecting?”

“Something else.”

Winnie was silent for a while, and then she said, “Well, come on home. Kit says ‘hey.’”

“Tell him I said ‘hey.’”

Around four every afternoon, I went to Cee Cee’s. I warmed up, ate dinner, and played until eleven or so. The crowd was genial and shabby. One night, I started in with “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.” Billy Joel always got them going. Cee Cee had supplied me with sheet music for all the cocktail standards. She liked Sinatra best, so I tried to throw in “The Lady Is a Tramp” for her. When I played it that night, Cee Cee came right over and dropped a twenty in my tip jar. I gave her “These Boots Were Made for Walking,” just for good measure.

At the end of the night, I was feeling good and drunk from the free drinks Cee Cee brought me as I played. I walked home through the lit streets, over the bridge. I looked down at the slow-moving river, imagining the fish that lived in its waters. It was bitter cold, so different from New Orleans. I missed my little apartment and my cat.

I reached the Wilma and rang for the elevator. It arrived, with Diane inside. “How’s Cee Cee?” she asked, as she struggled to close the elevator door.

“Fine,” I said.

Diane shook her head. “I’ll just bet she is,” she said. We reached the second floor, and I helped Diane open the door. “Good night, now,” she said.

“Good night.”

It was too late to call Madeline, but I did it anyway. “Where have you been?” she said, answering on the fourth ring.

“What do you mean?”

“Every time I call, someone picks up the phone but doesn’t say anything,” said Madeline. “What the hell is going on?”

“It wasn’t me,” I said. “The phone’s in the hallway, so it must have been someone else.”

“The hallway? Jesus,” said Madeline.

Around me, the shadowy building was silent, and I was alone. “I think I found her,” I whispered.

“What?” said Madeline. “I can’t hear you.”

“Nothing.”

“Talk to me!” said Madeline. “Come home.”

I don’t even know where that is, I almost said. Instead, I said, “Not now.”

It was very dark outside when I heard Ellie leaving her apartment. I was tired of sitting around: I decided to follow her. The elevator arrived, and when I heard her step on it, I slipped into my coat and snowpants. By taking the back stairway, I reached the street in time to see Ellie walking quickly, a block away from me.

It was freezing cold, and I jammed my hands into my pockets. Madeline’s pants made a swishing sound. I saw Ellie’s red coat through snowflakes. The street was slippery under my cheap boots.

I crossed Higgins and hung back as she entered a doorway. I ran across the street, almost getting run over by a brown VW van, and followed her into The Oxford, a well-lit diner. It was nearly midnight. A linoleum counter faced a board with the specials spelled out in plastic letters: Chicken Fried Steak, Texas Toast, Brains & Eggs. The men at the counter drank beer with their food. Ellie was nowhere to be seen.

From the corner of the diner, a cheap melody rang out from a Keno machine. Next to the Keno machine was a red curtain. I walked toward the back, checking in the dingy ladies’ room, and then stopping by the red curtain. From behind it, I heard, Pour some sugar on me…. I took a breath—no one seemed to be watching me—and pulled the curtain back.

There was a room beyond the curtain. A club, to be exact. A fat man on a stool looked me up and down. “Five dollars,” he said. I opened my wallet, and pulled out a ten. He handed me five wrinkled ones as change. “Have fun,” he said with a creepy grin.

I walked into the club (it was Mulligan’s, the other name on my napkin, I found out later) and the music pounded against my head. Def Leppard gave way to Whitesnake. I went to the bar and ordered a Jack and Coke. From the bar, I could see the stage, where a desperately skinny woman shook her body back and forth. She was completely nude, trying her best to keep the beat in her drugged-out state. Some man in a cowboy hat held up a bill, and she moseyed over to him, turned completely around, and bent forward. He stuck the bill between her butt cheeks. It was a one-dollar bill. I looked down into my drink, feeling sick and sad.

The girl skipped around. Her hair was limp, her eyes glassy. There were about twenty people in Mulligan’s. I was the only woman, and I did not see Ellie. The music thumped on.

Finally, the drugged-out girl limped offstage. The music stopped. After a few minutes, people began grumbling. I ordered another drink, just whiskey this time. I had a bad feeling about what was going to happen, and I was right.

The trippy sounds of Moby wound into the club, and she slinked onstage in a red shortie nightgown and robe. High-heeled patent-leather boots. The midnight showstopper: Ellie.

She had always loved to dance. I thought of her ballet lessons, her chubby frame in pale leotards, recitals on the high school stage. Even taking a walk through our neighborhood, Ellie danced ahead of us, moving her arms to a rhythm the rest of us couldn’t hear. She’d pull Madeline or me to our feet, begging us to tango with her. It hit me, as I sat in the seedy Montana strip club: what I had missed. Visions of Ellie swam before me. Ellie at sixteen, at twenty. What Ellies had existed between the hopeful girl I had known and the rough woman gyrating before me now?

There was nothing familiar in Ellie’s movements. Her body seemed liquid, and her eyes were half closed. Her head lolled on her neck as if it wasn’t quite attached. She was in another world. As I watched, she unzipped one boot, and then the other. The men by the stage were hooting, but I couldn’t see anything sexy about her. Her breasts were large, much larger than mine or Madeline’s. Perhaps she had had them done. I imagined her in some doctor’s office, her upper arm encircled by a man’s large hand. She raised her arms above her head—a cheerless imitation of the ballet she had learned as a child—and she stepped from her boots.

Barefoot, she whirled around the stage. The music switched to Portishead—low, slow notes. The bar seemed entranced. Ellie slipped her robe from her shoulders and let it fall down her arms. It was cheap polyester, but Ellie made it look like the finest silk as it slid over her skin. She caught it between two fingers and it trailed from her, rippling in the smoky air. The room was very hot: protection against the brittle chill outside. This whole place was about fortification, I realized, something to get you through the bare, cold nights. New Orleans had plenty of strip clubs, don’t get me wrong, but the sheer desperation in Mulligan’s made me scared. Men watched Ellie as if they wanted to devour her. They watched with agony, with anger.

Ellie let go of the robe. She was barefoot now, in the red nightie. She brought her arms up again, and again I saw her at four, standing onstage in a pink tutu, a sequined tiara in her hair.

“Take it off, Charlene!” yelled a bearded man.

“Yeah, girl!” chimed in another voice.

She did not appear to hear them. She spun slowly, then with greater speed. She spun until it was hard to see any specific part of her. Her hair melted into her jawbone, the red dress leapt into flame, her ankles were nothing more than a blur. Finally, she stopped. Her face was flushed, and a few strands were stuck to her cheek. Her eyes were closed, and she slowly let one arm fall forward, her white palm opening, as if waiting for someone’s hand to slip inside. She was still, her ribcage rising and falling. The song ended, and she stood in silence.

“Charlene!” yelled the bushy man. “Come on, honey.”

The music had ended, and the faint ping of the Keno machine was the only accompaniment. She reached to her shoulder and untied the ribbon that held up the nightgown. No one lifted a drink, or made a sound. Ellie touched the other shoulder. She pulled the ribbon, and the nightgown fell.

I could not turn away. Ellie’s body was revealed; small-boned, the color of milk. Her stomach was soft. She had shaved her pubic hair, which made her look disturbingly childlike. She opened her eyes, came out of whatever dream had held her. She paused, blinking, naked. Her look was blank, faintly confused. After a few seconds, she bent, collected her clothes, and walked off the stage.

ZZ Top came blaring over the speakers, and another girl took the spotlight, a feisty brunette with a feather boa. I had seen enough.

I drew the red curtain aside, and the halogen lights of the diner made me wince. I zipped my ridiculous parka and pulled my hat over my ears. Cold smacked me in the face when I opened the door, pushing tears from my eyes and burning my lungs.

The sky was empty. I felt raw inside. I suddenly wanted to play piano, to let my sadness flow from my fingertips. A melancholy tune began to well up in my chest.

It had been years since I had heard music playing in my body. Throughout my childhood, I had been trotted out to play for guests, zipped into velvet dresses for my twice-yearly recitals. But when Ellie disappeared, the shining notes went with her. There had been a time when I had fallen asleep listening to my own music. Though I labored through my music major at University of New Orleans, playing steady, uninspired sonatas, dutifully practicing, the joy of composing fled me little by little, and I was left with only technical talent. I could play whatever you put in front of me. If I sat at the piano without sheet music, however, my fingers were clumsy. After college, I stopped playing entirely.

But in the middle of the street, the Oxford Diner sign on one side of me and the mountains on the other, I felt the saddest song fill me. I stood under the fading stars, trying to convince myself that the tears frozen in my eyelashes were from the wind.