September Girls (15 page)

Mom beamed at the compliment. The room around us seemed to exhale and then hold its breath again. “My friend Gonzo did it. He’s a genius, G-E-N-I-U-S. A real artist, you know. I’ve been staying with him since my banishment from the land of the ladies. Or, I was. It was much better there—the shower actually drains. Who would have thunk?”

“Who would have thunk?” Jeff echoed.

“And look at this one!” she exclaimed, lifting her sleeve and extending her forearm, which was covered in illegible tattooed text. “It’s Sharon Olds. Brilliant.”

I hadn’t gotten a chance to look at Jeff’s face and had no graceful way of turning for his reaction. But I could pretty much picture it. “Fucking unreal,” he said. A moment later, I heard the door slam. He was gone.

“Well someone’s in a bad mood,” Mom said. “Jeez Louise.”

Dad shook his head and wandered off and then it was just me and Mom, staring at each other. She sighed and collapsed back onto the couch, splaying out dramatically. I wanted to leave too—just go somewhere—but I felt sort of bad for her. And where was there, really, to go? So I just hovered.

“Was this a bad idea?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“At least you want me here,” she said. “At least I’ve got my old pal Sam.”

“Why did you come back?” I asked.

“You told me to. I could tell you needed me.” She slugged the last of her wine. “‘Winter, spring, summer, or fall . . .’” James fucking Taylor again.

But it was true. I was the one who had summoned her. Maybe I could have done it all along. Maybe if I had asked her nicely she never would have left in the first place.

DeeDee had asked me if I missed her and I said I didn’t know, but I had; I had missed my mother. Even this strange person sitting in front of me with her tattoos and her striped hair and whatever else: I didn’t even know her and I had missed her.

She had tried to do something. She was trying to do something. She was my mother. She had come back for me. At least, that’s what she said.

I left her sitting there and walked outside. Jeff was crouched in the driveway and I squatted down next to him. We didn’t have anything to say to each other. If he had been DeeDee I could have told him anything. I could have pretended she didn’t speak English and just confessed everything, things I didn’t even know I had to confess. But Jeff was just Jeff ,and I didn’t know where to find DeeDee, so we just sat there in silence.

“Crazy day, bro,” he finally said, after we had sat there for what must have been an hour.

“Crazy,” I said.

We both went back inside and went to sleep.

Jeff’s voice was the first thing I heard the next morning. “Hey,” he whispered as I groaned in my sleep. “Let’s get the hell out of here. I can’t be in this house with these people.”

I sat up in bed and rubbed my eyes. Somewhere in the distance I could hear strange noises. Well, strange if murder can be considered strange—it sounded like someone was being killed down the hall.

“Are they having sex?” I asked.

“Never you mind, little brother,” Jeff said, “Let’s just go.”

I considered fleeing in my pajamas, but in the end decided to throw my bathing suit on. I met Jeff in the driveway, where he was smoking and fidgeting with his hair.

“Since when do you smoke?” I asked.

“Oh,” he said. “I don’t. Come on, let’s walk somewhere.” We went to the beach because that was pretty much the only place to go around here.

On the shore, I could feel restlessness rising at my ankles. When I tried to picture Sebastian and school and even Sasha Swain and our house in the suburbs in my mind, I came up with hardly anything. Would any of them remember me when I got home? Was our house still ours, and if we ever returned to it, would I be the same person when I got there? If so, who exactly was that person, again?

It suddenly occurred to me to wonder why I hadn’t heard from Sebastian. It wasn’t like him; normally he would have been texting to the point of nuisance. Of course, I hadn’t been in touch with him, either. It was almost as if there was a force here holding us separate from the rest of the world. But it also probably had something to do with the impossible cell phone reception and not having Wi-Fi in the cottage.

I considered the notion that we had been swallowed, and that the longer we stayed here, the less likely it would be that we would ever be able to return home. That if we tried to cross the causeway back to everyday life, a hurricane might come from nowhere and push us right back to where we’d started. I thought of the Lost Colony, and what DeeDee had said.
This is where people come to disappear.

Mom had tried to disappear herself, and somehow she had disappeared herself right back to our makeshift lost colony anyway.

Many of the people you meet here have already disappeared from one elsewhere or another.
Was I really one of them?

“So why do you think she’s back?” Jeff was wanting to know. We were making our way along the coastline, walking in the damp sand left by the receding tide as beads of sweat formed at the nape of my neck and trickled down my spine to the cleft of my ass. “Is she really even back?” he said. “Or is she going to be gone again by the time we get home? How did she find us?”

I didn’t tell him that I had some vague notion of the answer to that question. I was ashamed that I had ever called her, although I couldn’t name the reason why. “Is it even her?” I asked. It wasn’t just a distraction technique; I was truly sort of uncertain.

“It’s her,” Jeff said. “I’d know her anywhere. Even with Sharon whatever tattooed all over her whole fucking arm. Even with everything.”

“I know,” I said.

“I wonder if she’ll stay,” Jeff said. “Dad’s so spineless. He should have told her to leave. How could he even let her in the door?”

“How could he not?” I said. “Really, how could he not?”

“You wouldn’t have.”

“Yes I would have,” I said.

“Well that’s different,” Jeff said, and he was right about that part.

Neither of us had discussed a destination, but as we continued our trek, it became clear exactly where we were aiming for. We passed the pier at the Fisherman’s Net and then three more piers after it, passed through the crowds to the edge of the rental developments where things were thinned out; we passed the pink hotel and continued along through the narrow and almost empty coast that abutted a gnarled, unpopulated wilderness. Without saying it, we were looking for the hidden cove, but it was eluding us. It hadn’t taken this long with DeeDee yesterday. Once I thought about it, I realized that yesterday it hadn’t taken any time at all. Or, it hadn’t felt like it had.

But Jeff and I walked for hours, ignoring the sunburns creeping at our shoulders. We talked about a lot of things but mostly about nothing.

After the brief initial foray into the subject of our insane mother, we were now pointedly avoiding all matters of substance, which included the topics of DeeDee, Dad, and Jeff’s recent queerification at the hands of Kristle. It was nice, though, just to be able to talk to him—I mean in a casual, unguarded way—for what was pretty much the first time in forever. It made me remember that he had once been a good older brother, when I’d been younger and he had been tall and smiling and very impressive.

We never reached DeeDee’s beach. It was like we had never been there, like it had never existed.

Eventually Jeff dropped to the sand in frustration. “Motherfucker,” he said. “This is weird, huh?” He pressed a finger to his shoulder, which was glowing angry red. “Shit motherfuck,” he said.

“There’s something funny about this whole fucking place,” I said. “And not funny ha-ha either.”

“I know,” he said. “I already knew, but this pretty much confirms it, huh?”

“What should we do?” I asked.

“I guess go get something to eat?” Jeff said. “I’m starving.” I was glad he suggested it. I wanted to see DeeDee again, but it seemed like going to find her on my own would be pushing my luck. If Jeff was suggesting that we go to the Fisherman’s Net there was no harm in going along with him. It wasn’t my fault that she worked there.

“God,” I said, trying not to sound eager. “There’s really not much to do around here, is there?”

After our endless walk out to the middle of nowhere in which we had found ourselves it only took a few minutes to walk back to the Fisherman’s Net. Kristle was out front smoking like she’d been expecting us all along and was annoyed that we were late to our appointment.

“Hey, babe,” Jeff called.

“Hey, babe,” Kristle said. So they had reached babe status.

He went to her and put his hands on her hips and pushed her back against the silvery shingles of the restaurant’s exterior. She wrapped her arms around his neck, cig still in hand, and they tongued each other hungrily in the salty, late-afternoon sun.

I stood and looked on awkwardly. Their slurping went on for much longer than I considered reasonable, especially given the fact that I was just standing there. When it got too gross to take anymore, I snuck past them into the restaurant, looking for DeeDee.

Instead I found a girl I didn’t recognize pushing through the swinging kitchen door, overflowing plates of fried crap balanced on her forearms, a sour expression on her face.

“She’s not here,” Kristle called from behind me. Jeff plopped himself down at the nearest empty table and was ostentatiously snapping his fingers for service.

“Who?” I asked.

“
Who
, he says. All I can tell you is she better come back soon,” Kristle went on. “Olay’s a disaster. Just watch, I bet you anything she screwed up every one of those orders.”

I didn’t really care to watch. “Where is she?” I asked.

“Waitress!” Jeff was calling. “Could I get some service?”

Kristle ignored him. “She called in sick. Some kind of bug I guess. Want something to eat? It’s on me.”

“Nah,” I said. “Maybe I’ll go find her. See how she’s doing. Where do you guys live anyway?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that. She’s really not feeling good. She wouldn’t want you to see her all gross and everything.”

“Maybe I’ll bring her some chicken soup or something.” Kristle let out a guffaw, and I felt my already-sunburned face flush.

Jeff had tired of being overlooked and wandered out of the restaurant again, probably onto the pier. Kristle dropped a hand to my hip and smiled a smarmily sympathetic smile.

“Listen,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll see her around at some point.”

“I’m sure,” I said.

“But you know,” she continued. “She’s pretty busy. So you might not.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Honestly, she and I had a talk last night. Just us girls. And the thing is that—listen—I don’t want you to get your hopes up or anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, who cares about DeeDee anyway? What’s so special about her?” Kristle placed a hand on my leg but jerked it away as Jeff poked his head back through the saloon doors. “Babe. I’m not hungry anymore,” he said. “Wanna go get a drink or something? You won’t believe what fucking happened yesterday.”

“Sure,” Kristle said. “Taffany’s working tonight. You wanna come too, Sam? She never cards.” She winked almost imperceptibly.

Jeff looked from Kristle to me and back, arching his eyebrows and cocking his head, silently communicating that he would kill me if I took her up on her invitation. Kristle grinned bigger at me in a silent challenge.

“Uh, no thanks,” I said. “I’m really tired.”

“Suit yourself,” Kristle said. She tossed her hair over one shoulder, then the other, then smoothed it with the back of her hand. “Another time.”

“Tell Dad I’ll be back tomorrow. If I feel like it,” Jeff said, and Kristle smacked him on the ass in mock indignation.

“I don’t know who you think you are!” she giggled.

Jeff looked back over his shoulder at me as they left together. Olay, the new waitress, was staring at me as she went about her business, but I didn’t say anything to her and she didn’t say anything to me.

At home, the stereo was blasting. I could hear it from the stairs to the kitchen door, and when I got inside, my mother was dancing around to Beyoncé, singing along to “Single Ladies” in an off-key warble. She was shaking her hips and sloshing a half-full tumbler of ice-and-something. There was an open bottle of Beefeater on the kitchen counter.

“So are you a single lady now?” I asked, but before she could answer I went out onto the porch, where I sat and looked out at the setting sun.

Out there, I made the decision not to be bothered by what Kristle had said about DeeDee—about
not getting my hopes up
or whatever. DeeDee didn’t even really seem to like her; there was no reason to think that Kristle would have the faintest clue what she thought about anything.

Instead, I found myself wondering about DeeDee’s mother. I wondered if she looked like her. If you could study the gold rings around DeeDee’s pupils and catch a glimpse in the way they glittered of the mother who’d let her go. I tried to project DeeDee’s face into the future, dress it up with lines and weight, thinking maybe that would reveal someone. But all I got was a blank where an image should have been. A shimmering, slippery lacuna.

I wondered if her mom missed her. I wondered if she even knew who she was now.

Or maybe she’d never even had a mother in the first place. But everyone has a mother.

I was still trying to imagine DeeDee’s mom when an image of my own mother came to me in a memory I had never stumbled on before. In the memory, I was younger—little—and Mom was younger too. She was happy and sun touched, her hair long and wavy, untroubled by gray, and she was wearing a pair of high-waisted jeans and a loose plaid shirt. It was spring and she was teaching me how to ride a bike, because my dad was too irritable and easily frustrated to teach anyone how to do anything. Mom was standing at the end of the driveway of our house in the suburbs, and she was laughing as I picked myself up off the ground after another spill and hopped back on the bike and finally nailed it. I sped past her into the street as she clapped her hands and said, “There you go, pal of mine; you’ve got it now.”