Miss Misery (25 page)

“Cath,” I whispered as gently as I could manage, half hoping she wouldn't hear me.

“Mmmm,” she breathed, kissing my neck, rubbing her hand—oh, God—along my waist and ever so slightly lower.

I closed my eyes. “Cath,” I said again. “Cath, I can't do this.”

All of a sudden she was alert to me, and her soft body turned rigid. “What are you talking about?” She spoke at full volume. What
was
I talking about?

“This,” I said, pulling back slightly. “This is fast…we should…talk about this.”

Cath pushed me off her and sat up. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I'm just not sure if this…is what we should be doing.”

Cath crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Why not? You don't want me?”

I blushed. “No, that's not it, I…”

She kicked at my crotch. “Because I can tell that you do.”

“Yeah, Cath,” I said, “I do. I really do. It's just that…” She stared, a flush in her cheeks. “I have a girlfriend, still. It still means something to me. I'm sorry.”

“You're sorry?” She reached around on the bed for her shirt, found mine instead, and pulled it over her body. Now she was navy blue and the slogan on her chest advertised a favorite band of mine that was entirely inappropriate for the situation: The Jealous Sound. “I don't fucking get you, creepo. I really don't.” She stood up and retrieved a pack of cigarettes from her desk, extracted one, and lit it. “If you have a girlfriend, why aren't you with her? If she means that much to you, why are you here with me?”

I sat up, feeling vulnerable with no shirt on. “I don't know.”

“If you're so faithful, why did you start a secret diary about being so fucking unfaithful?”

“You read it?”

“Of course I read it. And you know what? I couldn't tell where the one you started and the other began.” She exhaled and leaned against the wall. I said nothing. “You wanted this life all the time—yet you managed to still be in la-la land with Annie?”

“Amy,” I said feebly.

“Whatever.” Cath stomped across the small room, back and forth, back and forth, pointing her cigarette at me like a pistol. “Seriously, tell me—if you even know. If you are so sure that you can't betray her or whatever, why aren't you over there with her now?”

I knotted my hands in my lap and stared down at my knuckles. The skin on my right fist was still chapped and raw from the punch I had thrown the night before. “I always told her that we'd be together forever. She was the one who had doubts. I was completely certain. About us. About the future.” I looked up at Cath, who was staring back at me. “I guess the only way to describe it is…it's like I carried the future in front of me like a carrot on a stick. The closer I got to it in terms of years or situation or life or whatever, it was always the same distance away. Like I was never going to actually reach it.”

Cath let out a bitter laugh. “You're comparing your girlfriend to a carrot.”

“No! No. Well, maybe. It's just that I knew the path I was on and what I wanted it to be, but I was never prepared for it to actually
happen.
You know?” I sighed. “Maybe it's for the best, her leaving. I promised her a future for years, but it was never going to stop being the future. It was never going to become the present.”

Cath stopped pacing and sat down on the bed across from me. “Mm-hmm.”

I rubbed my forehead. “It's just…when I talk about it, I feel like I'm running in place. No, not in place; like in one of those—what were they? Those exercise balls you'd put a gerbil in? So it can run around on the floor but never actually escape?”

“David,” Cath said.

I looked up. “Yes?”

“Are you drunk?”

“What? No!”

“First your girlfriend is a carrot, now you're a gerbil in a plastic ball. Hello? Why can't you talk about this like a human being?”

I shook my head. “Yeah, but…”

“But what?”

“Gerbils really like carrots.”

She smacked me in the shoulder.

“You have got to do something about that aggression,” I said, staring at the red, Cath's-hand-sized mark that was forming on my body.

“Yeah, well, you've got to do something about your psychological meltdown.”

“I know it.”

“So seriously, why did you start that diary?”

I considered the question, maybe for the first time. “I guess I bound up so much of my life in her that when she left…it's like I was nothing. And I had this urge to be
something
, to do something. And all of the lives that I was reading about seemed so much fuller than mine. Full of all these things that seemed so appealing. So impossible.”

“David, they're not like that. They're just the parts people choose to share.”

“I know.”

“And look at the parts you chose to share.”

Silence.

“But what about you, Cath? The long nights? The drinking? The sex? That's what you were presenting to everyone—what did that mean about you? What does that say about you?”

She threw up her hands. “What does it say about me? I'll tell you: whatever I want it to! I don't care! It's my actual life, David—it's what I've got. It's not some walk-on-the-wild-side fantasy. I'd fucking love to have what you apparently threw out, and until I get it I can do whatever I fucking want.” She paused, lowered her voice. “You're just running and running, but you're not running
to
anything.” She stubbed out her cigarette, considered her words. “I'm not a plot device for you, David. I'm not some evil harpy thrown into your life to cause your downfall. I'm just me. And I deserve better than this.”

“You're right,” I said. “You're right.” She leaned back, stretching one leg across mine, and I felt all the heaviness of the past week in that solitary contact. “I guess I want everything. But I just don't want to deal with the consequences.”

“David,” she said, sounding suddenly more tired and old than she had any right to, “you need to figure this out. Quickly. You can't be two people, David. It doesn't work that way.”

“I know,” I said.

“You either want to or you don't. There's nothing else to it.”

“I know,” I said.

“Decide,” she said.

But I didn't decide, not then. I couldn't. The more I pushed away from Cath Kennedy, the more I wanted her to pull me back. And the more I tried to eliminate the doppelgänger, the more divided I felt. We talked a bit longer and we even made out some more, but the passion was gone and the reason for doing so even more lost. I had wanted Miss Misery, but I had met Cath Kennedy instead. And the funny thing was that maybe after everything, I wanted Cath Kennedy more. But wanting and doing are two separate things—each with its own set of responsibilities and consequences. There was no Miss Misery. There was only Cath, and she was real and made of bones and feelings and not to be trifled with. Not halfheartedly. Not without fixing myself first.

So eventually I got up to leave, and Cath let me—I put my shirt back on and even turned away as she changed into one of her own. I knew I had to call Amy again. And I knew I couldn't hang up until everything was resolved.

At the door Cath said, “Thanks for coming.”

And I said, “Thank you for inviting me. I really had a wonderful time.”

We stood a little longer, awkward in the formality of the moment. Then Cath's face brightened. “I almost forgot!” She reached into her skirt pocket, pulled out my driver's license, and handed it to me.

“How—how did you get this?”

Cath beamed, shrugged. “I found it on the floor of the Madrox last night on my way out. I guess the other you was too fucked up to remember to hold onto it.”

“Wow,” I said, staring at it. David Gould. Five feet nine inches. Brown eyes. Organ donor. Never before had I been so happy to see the simple details of my life in front of me. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” said Cath, kissing me on the cheek and pushing me gently out the door. “Try not to lose it again—and try not to forget it either.”

 

It was after midnight when I got off the subway in Brooklyn, and the streets were quiet. Walking home, I turned my face up and closed my eyes; tried to catch the warmth of the night in my mouth, tried to swallow it and trap it and make it part of me, the only calm part left. Sooner or later, this craziness had to come to an end. I realized, maybe for the first time, that only I could end it.

As I neared my building it appeared that someone had left some luggage on the top step. Was someone moving out? But no, it wasn't luggage—it was a person, huddled over and keeping still. A bum? A locked-out member of the Armando family? It wasn't—oh, God—it wasn't the doppelgänger, was it? Bringing my nightmare quite literally to my doorstep? But no, it wasn't him either. I approached quietly, swinging open the gate, and only then realized that the huddled figure was, in fact, a teenage girl with long blond hair. The girl was wearing a gray sweatshirt with a unicorn on it and listening intently to headphones, which she threw off as she caught sight of me. No way, I thought. It couldn't be. I rubbed my eyes.

“Ashleigh?”

The blond girl on the steps sprung up. “I thought you'd be taller,” she said, and threw her arms around me.

I reserved the ticket and I just finished packing my bag and that's it. I'm outta here. I'm done. They think I'm catching a ride with Jonathan Howland and his family but by the time they figure out the truth, I'll be across the country.

I am tired of living a lie. I am tired of having the people who made me and are supposed to love me the most hate me, undercut me, try to hurt me. And I am tired of lying to them. Having to be two people—the good one and the real one. Leading a double life. I'm so freaking sick of it. I know that this seems like a crazy thing to say but all I want is a life that's less complicated. And I can't get it here. Mom coming in here last night and searching under my bed and taking every CD that she found—every notebook, every scrap of paper. That was the last straw. When she touched the parts of me that I had created, that I'm responsible for…when she balled up the papers and ripped some and clenched them in her furious hands it was like she was doing that to me. Balling me up and ripping me and throwing me away. It hurt so deep.

So I'm leaving. I'm leaving everything. My family doesn't know me and they don't want to know me so I'm going to the one person I don't have to lie to. The one person who understands me better than anyone else. And the one city where you're allowed to start all over.

This isn't like that poem we read in school last year about the two roads in the forest. My life has never been like that. My life has been nothing but dark, miserable forest. And what I'm doing today is the first time I even saw a road.

If anyone ever finds this and reads this just know that I'm happier—maybe even happy. I'm sorry for all the hurt I caused everyone and mostly I'm sorry for letting everyone down. I'm sorry Jessie that I won't see you grow up but you're perfect and light and all I could ever do was mess you up, make you dark, or drag you down. Maybe one day we'll know each other again and you'll forgive me.

Good-bye. Good-bye. Good-bye. ::crying:: Good-bye.

In my dream, I was sitting in the chorus room at my old high school. I thought I was waiting for Mr. Davis, the beloved music teacher, but in fact I was waiting for the dentist. It seemed that one of my teeth—my favorite tooth, actually, the sharp incisor on the right side—was loose, and I was waiting for him to show up and examine it. But there was a bowling alley next door, and the noise was so loud that my tooth started rattling around in my mouth, and then it fell out. For a while I thought it was OK because it was just a baby tooth, but then I remembered that I'd lost all my baby teeth twenty years before, so this one was really gone. Gone for good. So I was swallowing blood and waiting for the hygienist—Cath Kennedy dressed as a candy striper—to notice that one and now two and then three of my grown-ass adult teeth were falling out of my mouth. And she wouldn't notice. No one would. My teeth were like rock candy—brittle and crunchy—and they fell out of my mouth in packs of two or three. But then someone was calling my name (finally!) and I turned but it wasn't Cath Kennedy or any member of my high-school faculty. It was someone else, someone young, saying, “David. David. David.”

“David.”

I opened my eyes. I was in bed. And Ashleigh Bortch was standing in the doorway repeating my name. I turned.

“Good morning!” she said merrily.

I rubbed my face. “Good morning, Ashleigh,” I said.

She was dressed as she had been the night before, and she was sipping a glass of orange juice. “Why do you have a pigeon feeder in your window?”

“I don't,” I said, struggling to get a firm grip on consciousness.

“Then what is it?”

“It's…” I cleared my throat, sat up. “Never mind. It's a pigeon feeder. What time is it?”

“It's eight a.m.,” she said sprightly. “It's when I always wake up.”

“Even during the summer?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I keep my alarm on year-round.”

“Fantastic,” I said. “Um, I'm going to take a shower. And then we're going to talk.”

“OK,” said Ashleigh.

“You can't stay here, Ashleigh. You have to go home.” I did my best to look stern, sitting as I was amid my unmade bed wearing a bright red T-shirt with a picture of Tintin on it.

But all she said was, “You're out of OJ!” And then she scampered back to the living room.

 

Ashleigh Bortch had run away from home, and the only place she had felt safe running to was here. To New York City. To my apartment. To me. She had tried to explain all of this the night before, sitting in my kitchen, clutching the mug of chamomile tea that I had made for her and doing her best not to cry. In turn, I did my best to reason with her, tried telling her that she didn't know me, that she couldn't run away from her own life—that it's better to stay and fight and deal with it. That she was breaking the law—or worse, that I was breaking it by even having her here with me. But she didn't listen to any of that. All she said was, “But you know me better than anyone else!” And her eyes got red and weepy and I could tell how tired and scared she was, and I looked in the mirror and my own eyes were red and exhausted. So I told her she could sleep on the futon for one night—but that tomorrow we'd have to work on sending her back home.

Her parents were under the impression that she was spending the weekend at a prospective pre-med student program at BYU, safely ensconced with no one but ardent fellow Mormons to entertain her; Mr. and Mrs. Bortch wouldn't worry about their daughter until she didn't show up at home again on Sunday. Ashleigh had pawned her stereo the day before and then used the cash—plus all the money she had in her bank account—to buy a one-way ticket from Salt Lake City to JFK. From there she had taken a bus and two subways and walked. She had gotten my address from the phone book.

I was impressed, of course, but also mortified. This girl didn't know me, and I certainly had no idea what to do with her. The fear and loneliness and unhappiness that had propelled her to fly to the other side of the country were as foreign to me as Cantonese. I wasn't a runner—I was a dedicated wallower—and my own teenage years had been generally spotless. For me to act as a confidante, let alone as guardian, to someone nearly a decade my junior was just impossible to comprehend. Not to mention incredibly inconvenient. For the longest time I had had nothing better to do than screw up my own life. Now, when I was finally gathering the necessary strength to work on fixing it, other people kept crashing their own problematic lives into mine. I felt like the only bumper car in the ring with its power turned off.

As I showered, I considered the various things I could say to Ashleigh, but all of them were subtle variations on the phrase “get out!” I sighed and rinsed the shampoo from my hair, letting the water run all over my face. It wasn't waking me up, particularly, but it was making me feel peaceful. The rhythm of the water was warm, dreamlike. Too nice, actually. I twisted the faucet and the water slowed to a trickle, then disappeared. Dripping and goose-bumped, I stared lazily out the window. Another beautiful day, bright blue and brilliant. Mrs. Armando's garden was an explosion of green below me, and in the backyard next to hers two young boys splashed in an inflatable kiddie pool. I couldn't kick this girl out. She had turned to me. I couldn't turn away.

I dried myself as best I could, threw the Tintin T-shirt back on, wrapped my towel around my waist, and walked out into the kitchen. Ashleigh was sitting at the kitchen table poring over old issues of
Transmission.
In her lap was a box of Kix cereal that had to have been at least a year old.

“This is stale,” she said, popping another handful into her mouth.

“I know,” I said. “But please—help yourself.”

She looked up at me with giant shining blue eyes. “Thanks,” she said. I couldn't be mean to this kid—she was living and dying on everything I said.

“I'll just be a second,” I said. “I'm going to get dressed, and then we are going to have a talk.”

“OK,” she said, turning back to the magazines. But I could feel her eyes back on me as I passed her en route to the bedroom. “Man,” she said. “You look just like all the emo boys in my high school.”

I froze. “I what, now?”

“Yeah,” she said. “All the emo boys are super skinny like you. Of course, they all have eating disorders, so they can wear girls'-size jeans. Like this guy I was crushing on for a second? Bert? He had a smaller waist than I did. That totally sucked.”

“Huh,” I said. “I'm gonna go get dressed now. I promise I won't wear any girls' jeans. You can check.”

“OK!” Ashleigh resumed crunching the stale cereal and I made it to the bedroom without further incident.

After I was dressed—in men's jeans and a plain gray T-shirt—I asked Ashleigh to sit with me in the living room. She took the futon, still covered in sheets from the bed I had made for her the night before. I pulled a chair in from the kitchen and sat on it facing her to make the whole thing seem more official.

“Golly,” said Ashleigh. “You sure have a lot of newspapers lying around.”

“Did you just say ‘golly'?”

She blushed. “Yeah, sorry. My parents make us say stuff like that. So we don't get in the habit of cursing or blaspheming or anything.”

“Gotcha,” I said. “I hope I don't offend you if I curse.”

She grinned. “No way.”

It was odd and disconcerting to be around someone so completely and totally
young
—but no, it was more than that. The kids at the party yesterday were young, but they were familiar—they were basically the same as me. This girl came from an entirely different planet. Her skin was whiter than white, and her hair was the sort of washed-out, straw-colored blond usually attainable only through multiple bleachings. She wasn't chubby, but she definitely wasn't skinny, either; her round and freckled cheeks seemed woefully out of place on such a tall frame. In fact, her body and head seemed to belong to two different people. Her body was that of a grown woman, but her movements belied her age: She fidgeted constantly, as if a small but distinguishable current were being run through her nerve endings. Her face was as wide open as the full moon, and her blue eyes had a hunger to them that was almost uncomfortable to look at. She giggled and talked bigger than she was, but having her in the room felt like playing host to a deer—something wild and willful and prepared to bolt at any moment.

“OK, Ashleigh,” I said. “Why did you run away from home?”

She frowned, and when she did so her lower lip stuck out almost comically from her face, as if it had been stung by some ornery wasp. “I told you all about this. I thought you were listening.”

“I'm sure I was listening,” I said as patiently as possible. “But why don't you tell me again just so we can have everything on the table.”

She glanced at the chaotic coffee table in front of her. “It looks like you've got plenty on the table already.”

“Cute,” I said.

She smiled then, but as she began to talk, the smile washed away from her face like a sand castle at high tide. “I hate my life, basically. I hate it so much. And I just got sick of it, you know? Fed up. They treat me so badly, and they didn't just invade my privacy this time. They freaking destroyed it. And so after all of that all I could think about was what we talked about. And I just wanted to do it for myself.”

I was confused. “What we talked about?”

“Yes!” She balled up one of the newspapers on the table and winged it at my head. Why were these younger women always trying to hit me? “Sorry,” she said. “I just don't want to know that you weren't listening. Nobody ever listens to me.”

“Don't worry,” I said. “I listen to you. I just want you to remind me what we talked about.”

“The other day,” she began, picking at her fingernails, “when we were online. We were talking about what you do if the entire world thinks of you as a different person. If you're totally misunderstood or not, like, you know…appreciated.”

My mind raced backward. It sounded familiar. But I thought we had been talking about
me.

She went on. “And I realized that when I was giving advice to you, I was really talking about myself. That you had to shake those other people. You had to take the false image of you that they carried in their brains and kill it dead. You had to, like, take it over.”