"Hello," I said anxiously as soon as I lifted the receiver.
"You're lying," he said. "I've called every hospital in Los Angeles and she's not registered at any of them. Where is she?" my father demanded.
I tried to speak, but my throat felt as if it had closed up. "Did she tell you to give me that cock n'bull story?" he demanded.
"It's not a lie," I finally managed. "You didn't call the right hospital and I told you she didn't want you to call or see her. I'm going to get her later today. She's being released," I said. "I'll tell her you called and called, and I'll tell her you broke into our house. I'll tell her how you've been following me and spying on me. tell her everything today. Leave us alone!" I screamed at him.
I slammed the receiver down so hard, the cradle nearly shattered. For a few moments I just stood there gazing at it, my heart pounding as I gasped for breath. Then I sank slowly to the floor, and sobbing, called Jade.
She answered with a laugh.
"Shut up," I heard her tell someone. "You're such an idiot. Hello," she said, and laughed again before I spoke. "Jade."
"Cat? What's up now?" she asked with a groan. "I'm sorry," I said through my sobs.
"I can't understand you. What's wrong? Why are you crying? Cat?"
"I'm sorry, Jade. I made a mistake. Stuart.. .doesn't want to get involved. He left," I said.
"Oh, great. I had a feeling this would happen. We shouldn't have listened to you. Damn."
"I'm sorry, but I do believe him when he says he won't tell anyone."
"Sure. Boys are such creeps."
"We have another problem," I said. "My father just called and demanded to speak to Geraldine again. He said he called every hospital in Los Angeles. I told him I was picking her up today and slammed the phone down."
"Brother," she said.
"I'm sorry. What should I do?"
"Nothing. You'll have to drive, it's a good thing you didn't break your right ankle. I'll send Misty over later just as we planned, so under the cover of darkness you can do exactly what we planned and hopefully that will throw him off. It's Cat," I heard her say. "Stuart's not driving you."
"Misty 's there?"
"Yes, she's here with Chris. He and David are waiting for us at the pool. We're all going swimming She'll have to figure out her own excuse to get rid of him for a while. Do you think your father's out there now?"
"I don't know. I'm scared," I said. "Stuart thinks we could be arrested on suspicion of murder. I don't want to get you all in trouble. I came up to our room. I'm here now, but it's not working for me."
"What? You're in the room?"
"It's not working."
"Cat, take it easy. You're getting hysterical."
"I lit the candle. I tried to meditate and calm down and..."
"All right. All right. I'll send Misty over now to be with you. She'll be there as soon as she can."
I heard her groan in the background.
"She's going to hate me. I know she wants to be with Chris."
"It'll be all right. I'll talk to her. She'll do what she said," Jade added, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "She'll come in through the back. Unlock the door and just wait for her. And Cat, try to stay calm. That's the most important thing now."
"I'm sorry. It's all my fault."
"Let's not do that," Jade nearly yelled. "Let's not start blaming ourselves. They're always trying to pass the blame onto us somehow. Just wait there, calmly. Damn them," she said.
I wasn't sure who the them was at this point, but I was afraid to utter another sound.
"Okay," I said in a small voice, and hung up the phone.
Trembling so badly, I clung to my crutches as I made my way out of the room. I didn't know where to go. Suddenly, going downstairs and being alone seemed terrifying. I went into my bedroom instead and closed the door. It was where I went and what I did all my life when I was afraid. I would crawl onto my bed and pull my legs in and hold myself and-close my eyes and wait for the waves and waves of anxiety and trepidation to go away. Sometimes they did immediately and sometimes it seemed to take hours, I would fall asleep and wake and still be trembling.
Geraldine never came to check on me, even when I was very little. It got so whenever my father did come to see if I was all right I welcomed his hands.
"There, there," he would say, "let's get our little girl to feel good again."
All my unheard, unvoiced screams were trapped in this room. I imagined them bubbling under the surface. The walls had absorbed them like a sponge. They could, at any sudden moment, explode in a cry so powerful, the whole house would go up in a cloud of dust. Some wind would come along and blow it all away so that it would be as if it had never existed, me and my sister and father along with it. The world would be so much better off, I thought.
I tried to close my ears as well as my eyes because sounds were rising up through the floors. I could swear I heard the vacuum going. Geraldine was there, cleaning, hating the dirt and dust, mumbling to herself about something she had read or seen that confirmed her dark, dreary view of people. Maybe I shouldn't have hated her so much. She had been betrayed too, I thought. Now I could understand why she was so hardened and bitter. Whom could she believe in?
Was that the sound of water running? Was she washing a floor, rinsing a table, doing windows? And that now, was it the droning of the television set, locked on one of her electronic preachers, confirming her dismal visions? Did I hear footsteps on the stairs? I tightened my eyelids and squeezed my body. She was whispering through the door.
"I told you. Now you see that you reap what you sow. You slept with him. You let him touch you. You're dirty deep down into your very soul. You can't scrub it out no matter how long you soak in a tub or shower or rub. Anyone can look at you and see. Sin is in your eyes. You let him touch you."
Whom did she mean, Stuart or my father? The whispering became unintelligible. It was just the constant sound of air flowing through her dried lips. I put all my strength of concentration on the image of a single candle flame and watched it flicker and flicker until it drifted into the tiny spiral of smoke and was gone.
A loud rapping sound snapped open my eyes. I listened, my heart thumping. Had all I had imagined been true? There was a tinkle at the window and then a thump on the wall. I rose, puzzled and terrified, but I made my way to the window and gazed out. Misty was below. I opened the window quickly.
"What are you doing? You didn't leave the back door unlocked."
"Oh, I'm sorry," I said. "I fell asleep."
"Hurry up. It looks like it's going to rain," she ordered, and went around to the back of the house.
I moved as quickly as I could and made my way down the stairs, through the house and to the door. She burst in, closing it quickly behind her.
"What happened? Don't you remember our plan?" "Yes, I'm sorry. I didn't realize how long I had been asleep."
"Jade told me what you said. I knew we shouldn't have trusted him Did you break up?"
"I guess," I said. "I don't expect him to come back."
"You're better off," she said. "I'm never going to fully trust any man, even the man I marry, if I marry. What good are promises and vows, even with a priest holding his hand over you both? I feel sorry for Ariel. My father will probably break her heart, too.
"Did he call again?" she suddenly asked.
"You mean my father?" She nodded. "No."
"Well, let's get started. I promised Chris I'd meet him at seven-thirty. One good thing about Chris is he never asks many questions. Where's the dress?"
"Upstairs where you left it," I said.
She hurried ahead. After she put it on and fixed her hair the way I had described Geraldine's, we got into the car. She sat on the floor in the back.
"Are you sure you can drive?"
"Yes," I said, even though I wasn't. I couldn't stop the trembling inside me. When I took hold of the steering wheel, it helped, but my breathing was so rapid and short, I was a
fraid I would make some terrible error and have an accident. Then what would we do? How would we explain anything?
"Go, go, go," Misty urged. "I'm not exactly comfortable down here."
"Okay."
I started the engine, opened the garage door.
"Oh, no," I said. "It's raining hard."
"That's good. It'll be more difficult for him to see us," she said.
Right, I thought, but it's harder to drive, too. I headed out slowly. As I left the driveway, / glanced around quickly, searching for signs of my father. A car more than halfway down the block did look like his.
"I think he's there. I think he's going to follow us."
"Try to lose him if he does," Misty coached from the back.
I watched the rearview mirror. Raindrops made the window look like shattered glass.
"It's hard to see in this. I can't tell if that car is his." "Forget about him, Cat. Just drive to the hospital."
"What hospital? We never decided!" I cried in a panic.
"Take it easy," she said. She gave me directions to Saint John's and we drove on.
During the whole trip, I never knew if he was right behind us or not. I made so many turns and took a number of side streets. We drove to the hospital, parked, and waited for as long as we thought it would take to get Geraldine checked out. I watched for any signs of him, but saw none. After what we thought was a sufficient time, we drove away with Misty in the front seat.
The rain fell in periodic torrents and then slowed to a drizzle. It was like that in Los Angeles. It could be raining hard ten blocks away and almost not raining where I was. When we arrived at the house, I closed the garage door behind us before either of us got out. Then we went to the living room and Misty took Geraldine's chair. I had her back to the window and opened the shutter just enough for someone to see her silhouette.
"I'll pretend to get you some tea," I said.
"Don't pretend. I could use a cup of something hot." After I brought it to her, she sipped it and smiled. "So? How do I look?"
"I don't know. I guess from across the street you look like her."
"I'll sit here another twenty minutes and then I'll walk out and leave through the back. Of course, I'll change first," she added with a laugh. "It's creepy, but if it works, he'll keep his distance."
"We hope," I said.
"Don't worry about Stuart. You'll have a new boyfriend in a week. I've got some ideas already. Jade wants us to have a meeting about all this tomorrow night," she added.
"Okay," I said, "but don't worry about getting me a boyfriend."
I gazed through the shutters at the street, Maybe he wasn't there. Maybe all of this was for nothing. I suppose we'll know soon enough, I thought.
"I'm going to heat up some soup," I said. "Be right back."
"It's all right. I'm fine," she told me.
At the doorway I gazed back at her. She was sipping her tea and gazing through the shutters. From where I stood, she did look like Geraldine. How many times had I seen her in that chair sipping tea and gazing out at the street? What went through her mind? What did she see? Did she envision a way out or did she imagine walls keeping her forever imprisoned in her terrible disappointments?
I could actually still see her, hear her, even smell her.
People don't die, I thought, until the memory of them is gone. How foolish I was to think that we could roll her into the ground, cover her up, and be free of her.
Geraldine and I would be joined forever and ever. We shared the same silences and heard similar voices. I was with her even now in our mutual garden of sorrow.
17 Daddy's Home
Maybe it worked, I thought. Hours passed and my father hadn't called, nor did he dare to come to the door. Actually, I hadn't heard from any of the girls, either. Finally, close to ten P.M., Jade phoned to see how things were. I heard music and laughter behind her. She told me she was at an exclusive beach club with David.
"Have you spoken to Star?" she asked. "I tried to reach her earlier to tell her about Stuart, but she went somewhere with Larry before I could reach her, and I didn't want to leave any message with her grandmother. She's spending more and more time with him."
"So she doesn't know about Stuart?"
"Not unless Misty's spoken to her since I tried. I'm planning for us all to meet tomorrow night. Misty told you, right?"
"Yes."
"Another crisis meeting," she said, "but what's new about that, huh?"
"Maybe Stuart's right," I said sadly. "Maybe we made a big mistake and we'll all get into terrible trouble."
"Don't get yourself all depressed, Cat. We'll figure it out. We always do," she said. "I've got to go. David's waiting. Stuart hasn't said anything to him, apparently. I'll call as soon as I'm up and around tomorrow morning. However, the way it's going that might be tomorrow afternoon," she added with a laugh.
Minutes after I hung up, Misty phoned. She said she and Chris had just come out of seeing a movie and they were stopping to get some slices of pizza.
"Anything happening?" she asked breathlessly, sounding like she was hovering over the receiver so Chris couldn't hear our conversation.
"No. Jade called and said she hadn't spoken yet to Star. Have you?"
"No. It's all right. We'll call her in the morning. You all right?"
"Yes," I lied.
I didn't want to say or do anything that would take away from their fun. If I hadn't insisted on our telling Stuart everything, I would have probably been spending the night with him and having fun, too, I thought. At least there would have been one more night or maybe two. I'm my own worst enemy. Geraldine used to say that. She might have been right at least about one thing.
"I need a favor," Misty said.
"What?" What could she possibly want from me? I wondered.
"I was going to bring Chris to my house tonight afterward, but my mother shocked me by having a small house party. Apparently, she has a date, too. Since my father's marriage, she's been looking for a boyfriend. Just for spite, I think."
"What's the favor?"
"I want to bring Chris over in about an hour. Do you think that would be all right even though you have no one to be with?"
"I don't know," I said. "It's not that I care about not having a date, too. If my father is out there and really believes we brought Geraldine home, he surely would wonder about it. Geraldine wouldn't let anyone within a foot of our door after ten and hopefully, we've got him believing she's here. Wouldn't we risk all that?"
"He can't be parked there all day and night," she said. "I didn't think he was there the night he took the picture of Stuart kissing me," I pointed out.
"We could come in through the back door," she said, "like I did."
"But how would you explain that to Chris?"
"I'll just say a neighbor complained about our party or something and you don't want your mother to know. You promised her no more parties or guests. Like I said, he doesn't ask questions. We'll stay in the living room. You don't have to wait up or anything. Just leave the back door unlocked," she said.
The thought of doing that sent a chill down my back, but then I realized my father could easily force it open anyway if he wanted to.
"Okay," I relented.
"And Cat?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't tell Jade or Star. It doesn't involve them," she said.
We don't keep secrets from each other, I thought, but I knew why she didn't want them to know. They might very well be upset at her for taking such a chance.
"I won't lie if they ask," I warned.
"No, I'm not asking you to. Just don't volunteer the information. Okay? If none of this is okay, I'll understand," she said.
"No, it's all right."
Actually, the thought of having someone else in the house tonight was comforting, even if they were totally involved in each other and practically forgot I existed.
"Don't wait up," she repeated, and hung up.
After I unlocked t
he back door, I went into the living room to watch television, but I didn't really see anything. The tube blinked and brightened, flickered with people. All the voices merged into one unintelligible hum. When I gazed around, I suddenly felt terribly lonely. It made me think of all the elderly people who sat in houses day and night, looking at the world through a television window. If they turned and looked out their house windows, nothing seemed much different after a while. What was real and what wasn't was hard to distinguish.
I closed my eyes and tried to think about Stuart, tried to remember our wonderful day and night, but already his face and his voice were sinking into the mire of lost remembrances. We hadn't had time to build a strong enough place for our memories to be safely stored. Had I imagined his smile, his wonderful words, his touch, and kiss? What had been real and what hadn't? Maybe none of it was. Maybe I had wanted it so much, I dreamed it all.
Worried still that Misty and I might not have done well, or that my father hadn't seen any of it, I tried to stay awake until she and Chris arrived, but try as I would, the terrible drowsiness was like water rushing over me, drowning me until I dropped deeper and deeper into a nightmare. I was rushing through a hallway full of cobwebs, breaking one after another, fleeing from someone whose footsteps grew louder and louder along with my growing panic. The cobwebs got thicker and harder to break. Soon I was struggling to get through one. The threads stuck to my arms and my legs like gum. I was be- coming more and more tired, stumbling now, until finally, I fell forward into a large web and just hung there, unable to move my arms or my legs.
When I looked down, I saw I was naked. The shadow coming after me grew darker and closer and then, I woke up, screaming. The sound of my own voice terrified me. I waved my arms and fell back in the chair, stunned that it had all just been a dream. I was soaked with sweat, too. My heart was a parade drum, marching my blood around my body in rhythmic thumps. It took a few minutes to get my breath.
It was still very quiet. Misty and Chris hadn't arrived. Actually, I had been asleep only a few minutes. Misty probably didn't want me to be down here when she and Chris arrived anyway, I thought. She made a big point of my not waiting up. I rose and started upstairs. I was going to soak in a tub and then try to sleep. Tomorrow, they would all be here, and we would start again and solve all our problems.