You know you wish you were me Read online

  “I’m lonely. I can’t believe you left me. Everybody fucking leaves me,” that’s some of what he said as he was speeding towards the little wall.

  Hana remembered more and more about the accident over the years. But she’s never tried to find out what happened to him. Nobody ever came by the house to ask her about it either. That’s why she doesn’t trust the police tonight. They have no idea she was with him that day.

  As she walks up the steps to their front door, a police car pulls into the driveway and lights up the front of the house with its headlights. One of the officers walks toward the house in the glow of the bright headlights.

  In this moment she feels again like she is in a movie. One of those scenes where the mother, in her apron and pinned up hair, gets the news she’s feared most, her child has died in a battle far away.

  Hana is prepared to fall to her knees in misery or joy. She is prepared to live her life with the verdict that this man is bringing as long as it ends all of the unknowns.

  Hana is sitting on the couch with Carol and Olivia. They are all holding hands. They are staring at the officer.

  “We’ve located Mr. Gomez,” he says.

  Hana feels Olivia’s squeeze tighten.

  “And your daughter is not with him. We’ve determined that he had nothing to do with her abduction. He’s got several witnesses who vouch for him. They’re all Buddhists. He’s living in a monastery, actually,” he stops talking and stands there awkwardly smoothing his hair back with his hand.

  No one says anything for a minute and in that short time Hana feels all of her hope drain from her body. It is a heavy feeling, like standing upright quickly after floating on your back in water. Your body’s weight feels like a burden. Her loss of hope feels the same way. She is carrying more now. The unknowns have multiplied and she feels like she is being pulled down under the weight of them.

  “What now? Don’t you have anything else to tell us? Where is my daughter?” Olivia’s voice is loud and strong. She is standing up. Carol is still holding her hand, trying to get her back to the couch. A human chain trying to keep her attached to civil behavior.

  “I’m sorry Ms. Sims, that’s all the information I have,” then the officer leaves them alone in the house and as he walks back to the police car, his shadows dance on the walls.

  ******

  NINE

  The curtains shut all the light out. Vivian hates the late sun on summer nights. It’s no good to have too much daylight. It used to be when she could sit out on the back patio and drink a Seven and Sevens with Dale.

  Anyway it’s all shit now.

  Her hand slides over the golf ball, glued to the round wooden base.

  “Hole in one.” She whistles a long whistle.

  Then she taps the top of the whisky bottle. One for the wedding, two for the day they bought the house.

  Over to the clock, which she straightens.

  “Always time for you, she says.

  Then to the photo in the tarnished gold frame. Him in his emerald green tux at the Rotary Christmas Ball, 1981. She kisses his head four times and holds the frame tight to her chest feeling the sharp edges on her breast as she takes a deep breath.

  She knows this ritual won’t bring him back, but something inside can’t let her stop, for one night. It’s a way of never forgetting.

  She is wearing her maroon night gown. It is made of fake velour and is too big for her. It ties at her neck with a pink ribbon. She wears it all year round, even now in the hot months.

  The walls of her house are faux wood paneling. Dale wanted a ranch-style house and that came with faux wood, exposed wooden beams in the ceiling that Vivian has never dusted. Prints of the prairies, orange sunsets, horse silhouettes and cactus. Vivian has added her own pieces of embroidery, pink and maroon, mostly. Home sweet home. God Bless this Mess.

  He kissed her on the check and pounded the nails in the spots in between his prairie prints for her to hang her creations,

  He was so kind.

  She weaves her fingers together and places her hands over her chest. It’s something she does when she thinks about him. Hugging herself isn’t as satisfying and this way her heart is safe and won’t burst out of her chest. She knows time heals all wounds, or she knows they say it does. But the thing is whoever said that first, never had a wound as bad as her losing Dale.

  The door from the garage opens and then slams shut. Then the door to the bathroom, just across the hall slams shut.

  He must have to go real bad.

  She turns out the lights and passes that bathroom on her way down the hallway to her bedroom.

  “Fuckin… pathetic… idiot,” Jay says from inside the bathroom.

  She hears pounding.

  “Jay.”

  The noise stops.

  “Jay,” she says again stern this time.

  He hasn’t been around for two days, which means the lawns haven’t been mowed and the kitchen sink is still clogged. She isn’t putting up with his laziness another minute.

  “Open this door.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you no me…”

  The door opens and he flashes past her and back into the garage. His body odor is strong. He’s been smoking.

  “Come back here.”

  The door to the garage door slams, but doesn’t shut. It bounces back open, something else he has yet to fix. The light in the garage, which is also his bedroom, is bright. The fluorescent bulbs flicker and click, so bright she has to squint at first, but then she sees Jay running towards her. Then beyond him, in his bed, she sees a small shape under a white sheet.

  “Grandma, grandma, please, grandma.”

  She is running towards the bed. He tries to grab her, but just gets her nightgown. He pulls hard, but she is moving forward, grabbing at the sheet. Underneath is a girl, small, with long curly brown hair. She has duct tape over her mouth, and around her ankles. She is screaming under the tape. A high muffled sound. So big coming from such a little girl. Vivian looks at Jay, he is frozen, staring at the girl.

  Vivian grabs him under the armpit hard like she did when he was younger. She pushes him away from the bed.

  “What’s going on?” she hisses and pushes him to the corner of the room, near the door to the inside of the house. “Where did she come from?”

  He can’t talk, he can’t catch his breath.

  “Talk to me you stupid boy,” Vivian says yanking at him a bit to get him back. “You sick or something? Who wraps a child up in tape?”

  “Ann. I wanted to…” he tries to catch his breath.

  “Ann, is that her name?”

  “No, not her. Ann from the campground. She’s special.”

  “What kind of special wants little girls?”

  Vivian gives him a shove and he hits the wall. She knows he’s not going to run on her. He can’t even do the laundry by himself.

  “Has she eaten? You go put some of the chicken soup in the

  microwave. Now.”

  Jay goes to the kitchen.

  Vivian turns around to look at the girl. She relaxes her hands and smiles as naturally as she can manage. She is afraid to approach the girl.

  The girl looks Vivian in the eyes.

  Vivian moves closer and puts her arms under the girl’s body. She lifts her up and carries her into the house. To the couch. She starts taking the tape off of her ankles. She looks up at the girl’s face. Here eyes are red and her face is dirty so are her clothes. Her shirt is ripped on the left sleeve.

  “Did he do anything?” Vivian whispers and feels nauseous thinking of what’s going on, what has happened since whenever the hell he took this little girl from wherever she belongs. “Did he hurt you at all… Touch you?”

  The girl just stares at Vivian.

  “Not talking to strangers? Good girl. Don’t worry, OK you’ll see you mom and dad real soon.” Vivian tries to take some of the tape off of the girl’s face, careful not to touch her too much.

&
nbsp; Jay brings the soup out. He’s put it on a platter, with two pieces of toast and a big glass of water. Vivian notices that he’s taken the crusts off and cut the buttered bread into triangles and layered them on a little plate. He sets the platter on a TV tray in the corner and brings it over to Vivian.

  “She don’t got a dad.”

  “Shush. You go sit down there,” she tells him, pointing at a chair facing the wall at the dining room table, far from where the girl is. She sets the tray in front of her.

  The girl does not waste time and eats a piece of toast and drinks big gulps of water. Vivian, confident the girl is more interested in the food than trying to run, joins Jay at the table.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “You sure better be boy. How did you get this girl?”

  “I took her.”

  “From where?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Jay drops his head.

  “Listen, you’ve made a bad mistake. We can make this better. You gotta tell me how this happened.”

  “I don’t know why it was so easy,” he says. Vivian watches as he rubs his hands on his thighs. He is anxious, she wants to thump him, but she will let him keep talking.

  “I was gonna go there street and see what it was like, and then maybe later, like in a couple of days or a month I was gonna do it, get her. But then, you know, I was there and saw that nobody was really around, so I just felt like why not? Why not do it right now. I went to the side of the house and couldn’t see anybody around. It was like they knew I was coming and just left me alone,” he stops talking and puts his head down and is quiet for a moment.

  Vivian’s throat is filling with acid, it’s feeling she is used to with this boy, the only way to get rid of it is to get away from him, but she can’t right now. Look at him, she thinks. He’s shaking. She reaches her arm out and steadily touches his thigh. She is trying so hard not to squeeze, pinch or hit him, the acid has almost reached her mouth. If he only knew how kind she is being to him right now.

  “Keep going,” she whispers. He looks up at her. He’s pathetic, she thinks, but curls her lips into a smile.

  “I had this idea that if anybody came out I would have said I was a garden worker, and that I wanted to do some work. I felt really smart, thinking of that. But nobody came except her,” he says nodding his head towards the girl on the couch.

  “I was in this really good spot, close to the porch. I waited till she was up the steps. Then I don’t remember thinking or anything, it was like my body filled with some chemical or powers I had never felt before. I hopped up the steps and she was opening the screen door, like to the front of the house, but she heard me and turned around because I made a loud noise. She let go of the door and opened her mouth like she was going to let out a big yell and I tensed up, but nothing came out of her. So I grabbed her and put my hand over her mouth.”

  Whatever pride he had been feeling drains quickly and he pounds his fist on his thigh a couple of times.

  “I never do anything the right way. Fuck, I was only supposed to check the place out. I parked in this alley thing close, so I just started running back to my car. I shouldn’t have taken her with me, you know, I could’ve just left her on the porch. But, like I wasn’t thinking, you know. My body was moving without me doing anything. It was so out in the open. I was really nervous because so many people could see me. I opened the trunk and I guess I know something might happen because I had a blanket and duct tape already. I put a couple layers over her mouth, no, first there was this car, this old lady driving this big car, so I had to shut the trunk and the she was kicking inside the trunk and screaming. It seemed like fuckin forever that this old lady was driving by. She was all crumpled up in the front seat in her big boat of a car. She didn’t look at me at all, she just kept her eyes on the road and rolled past me slowly. It was like she knew what I was doing and she didn’t want to bother me. In my head, she was telling me it was OK,” his speech speeds up again. “Then it was like magic, it was like my hands worked all by themselves, like robots. I taped her mouth up, then her arms and legs. Then wrapped her tight in the blanket and taped it up until the tape was gone. She was crying when I shut the trunk.”

  Vivian watches his face. His forehead, mouth and eyes, they’re all soft. Her face feels like it’s so tight that it’s going to split from her head. She watches him for another moment and realizes he has finished his story. She has to grab the seat of her chair to keep from pouncing on him, beating him to the floor. If that girl wasn’t sitting there watching them, she would hurt him right now.

  “Why did you take her Jay? Why her?”

  “For Ann, I told you.”

  “Oh, right, Ann. Tell me again,” Vivian has no idea what he is talking about.

  “She’s a counselor at the Crusaders Camp, they rented the campground out last June. I like her and I think she likes me. That’s why I took her,” Jay nods at the girl and looks at Vivian. “She was asking me all these questions.”

  “Who?”

  “Ann,” his voice is angry.

  “Don’t talk to me like that. You are not in a position to talk to me like that right now, are you?” She is tired of being fake nice to him.

  Jay shakes his head.

  “Finish your story then.”

  “Ann was telling me all these things she wanted to do. Like she was telling me about kids whose parents are fags and stuff and she wanted to help those kids cuz they need a normal life. She told me she wanted me to do something… important. Something big,” he said and Vivian could tell he really thought he was doing a good thing. She asked me if I wanted to work in the campground forever and I said I didn’t know and everything she asked me I didn’t know the answer. So she made me feel like I wanted to do something good, something big, for her.”

  “Big?”

  “Ann told me about her. She said there’s this little girl who lives on her grandma’s street. She don’t have no dad cuz her mom’s a dyke and… She said she wanted to save her from that.”

  “Save her? Did she tell you to take this girl?””

  “No. But I thought it would be something really big I could do. I wanted to help her.”

  “Who?”

  “Ann.”

  “But what about her,” Vivian’s voice was a whisper as she turned toward the girl on the couch again. “She’s got a mother of her own and you took her?”

  “Ann said she was in danger, that there is no God in their house and that she could give her a better life,” Jay’s face is strained.

  Vivian can see that he is unsure of himself as he told her the rest of the story.

  He said he drove to Ann’s house, he felt triumphant, like he had done something big because it was for her and he couldn’t wait to share it with her. She was the one who told him about this girl and now he had her and he was going to see Ann. His stomach got that bubbly feeling as he thought about Ann’s reaction. It’s what she wanted and he thought she would love him so much for this.

  He found her street and her house and pulled into the driveway. He turned the car off and listened for any noise from the back. He heard nothing. He went up to the door and knocked, but there was no answer.

  He knocked again, but nobody was home. He got very tense then and felt his face get really hot. He started pounding on the door with the side of his fist. Three times. Nothing. Three times. Nothing.

  He walked to the side of the house, but there was this tall fence with barbed wire at the top. He wished then that he would have called Ann in advance. That maybe it wasn’t good that everything was a surprise.

  He went back to his car and sat there for a long time trying to quiet the screaming thoughts in his head. Stupid fucking idiot. What are you gonna do now? No plan fucking stupid.

  Vivian watches as he hits his head with his hands, but she doesn’t try to stop him.

  He said he thought about taking the girl to some random place and dropping her off. But she would tell them about the car and des
cribe his face. He wouldn’t have time to get away. The cops would follow him here.

  He could have ditched the car and run for it. He’s got $1,200 in the bank. He could have taken off to Mexico. He could have left the girl in the trunk and called Ann from the road and told her she was in the trunk.

  “That’s so pussy. I’m such a fucking fuck up.”

  So he drove back to the main road, found a pay phone and dialed Ann’s number. But nobody answered except the answering machine.

  “Ann, this is Jay. Um, I’m in town, near your house. I got something big… Want to hang out? I’ll call back,” he slammed the phone down.

  He said he felt hopeless and even cried a little, which he hadn’t done in a long long time. He got back in his car and turned down the first street he came to. But it looked like it went for miles, with nothing but houses. So he turned the wheel hard and made a U-turn and didn’t stop driving till it was pretty dark. Then he stopped in a really dark spot and took the girl out of the trunk and put her in the back seat, because he was lonely and a little afraid that she was dead.

  “Jay what did you think was going to happen when you gave this girl to Ann? Did you really think she was going to be happy?” Vivian asks.

  “Yes, it’s her dream Grandma,” Jay says, looking at Vivian with sad heavy eyes.

  “You are stupid, boy. You took her just to get into some Jesus freak’s pants.” Vivian reaches over to Jay’s head. “You’ve never even been to church.”

  He flinches, but she grabs his ears and stretches them out. Opening them up. She’s often wanted to do this because he behaves as if they’ve been closed up for a long time and that’s why he does the things he does.

  “Owww,” he tries to shake his head from her grip, but she is holding tight.

  “Listen to me,” she says slowly. “What you’ve done is very very wrong Jay.”

  “Let go,” he whimpers.

  “No, I don’t think you understand. This kind of thing can hurt this little girl for the rest of her life. She smells like piss Jay, you made her pee on herself. What else did you do?”