Chimera, page 23
Kam sat quietly, listening, Joshua tapped his foot to the music, though not in rhythm, Samuel, stared at the fire, and Catherine sat next to me, her legs stretched out in front of her, completely relaxed. It was nice, it was peaceful, it was perfect.
And then I had to go and ruin it.
Joshua, after the last song finished, turned to a classical station, and when Abby heard Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, she told Joshua to leave it there and started to play along, not even needing a second to familiarize herself with the music.
I leaned over to Catherine and asked her where Abby had learned to play.
“Her mother. Her mother used to play.”
“And her mother is, of course, dead, right?”
“Yes, she is.”
“How? How did she die?”
“She, uh, was trampled to death.”
“Trampled?” I said, a little too loudly and Abby looked our way disapprovingly, but continued to play.
“How in the world did she get trampled?” I whispered to Catherine, leaning in closer to her, speaking close to her ear.
“Well I wasn’t there, so I don’t really know for sure.”
“But was she at a concert? A football game? Shopping on Black Friday?”
“Horses, it was horses.”
“Horses?” My voice went up again and this time it was Catherine who gave me a look: Shush!
I leaned over again, to ask another question but then instantly forgot what I was going to ask when something finally snapped into place. Her ears. Catherine’s ears. I had been bothered with them since day one but I could never figure out what was bothering me. Now I knew. They weren’t pierced. They had been before, I was sure of that. That day at the truck stop she’d been wearing small round silver earrings. I remember because when she’d said they had a map to Atlantis on them I’d pictured someone being shrunken down to the size three times smaller than a flea standing inside one of them. Like a reverse globe, a map to the mythical lost city surrounding them. They weren’t clip-ons. That was impossible. An identical twin? No. I’d spent way too much time with her by now not to notice something like that and it was probably the dumbest of all my theories to date. And besides, I could see the scar on her temple. The scar I’d first noticed at the very same truck stop. Yet there it was, pierced ears one moment, unpierced the next. It’s possible, that she had had them pierced just before that day, and they had closed up when she removed her earrings, but that doesn’t happen in a matter of hours does it? And I remember distinctly that even then, her earlobes were smooth and unmarked.
“Your ears aren’t pierced,” I said to her as the song continued to play and Samuel turned toward us.
She touched her earlobes. “No, they aren’t.”
“But they were, before, at the truck stop.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, then covering her ears with her hair. “I’ve never had my ears pierced.”
“Catherine, you had earrings on, remember? A map of Atlantis? You were being snarky about mine.”
“Are you sure you’re not remember someone el—“
“Yes, Catherine, I’m sure. I know all of you are smarter than I am but I’m not stupid.” I was trying to keep my voice low but I was unsuccessful. Kam, turned his head in our direction, listening to what Catherine was going to say.
“I didn’t say you were stupid, I said you might be mistaken.”
“I’m not mistaken,” I said. “Are you going to answer my question or not? How is it possible for you to have had pierced ears before and not now?”
“I don’t know what it is you want me to say Emile. My ears aren’t pierced, is that such a big deal?”
It was like trying to explain geometry to a zebra.
I don’t know what it was. A month of Abby’s attitude. A month of sleeping in cramped quarters. A month of not knowing certain things. Being threatened with a hand grenade. Grieving for Mr. Anderson. Hormones? I don’t know, but at that moment, all of a sudden, it all came crashing down on me. Piled up, compressed, it was all too much. I was angry.
“I’ve been good about not complaining about any of this. I’ve been good about letting you keep your damned promise. I’ve said nothing about you and your boyfriend.” Catherine looked around at that, trying to see if anyone heard. I’d stopped whispering, stopped caring that all of them, including Joshua and Abby (Daniel had been gone for days now) were now outright staring at the pair of us. They heard.
“I thought we’d become friends, yet you won’t tell me anything. This is my life, not a game.”
“Emile, please, keep your voice down. I’ve told you what we’re doing—“
“Is for the right reasons, my best interests, yada, yada. It’s been a month and still you won’t tell me anything.”
“I tried to and you stopped me, don’t be unfair,” she said, pointing her finger at me, starting to get angry herself.
“That was about breaking your promise. This is different. Why are your ears not pierced? How is that possible?”
She only shook her head. She refused to answer me.
I looked around at all of them in turn. All of them looked uncomfortable but for what reason I didn’t know. Because I was now yelling? Because they were hiding something?
Samuel was playing with his cuticles, Joshua banged on the radio, as if had stopped working, Kam called Mustard over to his side, tempting him with a fried dumpling. Only Abby kept her eyes on us, waiting for Catherine’s answer.
I stood up, no longer caring that I was making a scene and asked again “Well? Are you going to answer me?”
Catherine looked up at me and shook her head once again.
“I’m done,” I said quietly. “I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to go home.”
“Home? You…you’re blowing all this out of proportion,” she said.
“I don’t care, I’m tired of not having any of my questions answered. And you treating me like a stupid child. I mean it, I want to go home.”
She looked around at everyone, cleared her throat. “I’m sorry but you can’t.”
I stood for another few seconds then turned and walked to my RV, picked up Catherine’s cot, and threw it as far away as I could (which wasn’t very far), stepped inside, and slammed the door shut behind me.
The music didn’t start up again and no one came after me. I could see them all through the front window, still sitting by the fire. I could see Abby talking, probably rejoicing, probably already laying out a plan to have me driven back, dumped somewhere on some street corner, happy to be rid of me. Samuel stood up, then sat, in my vacated seat, next to Catherine.
After a few minutes, still angry, furious really, I turned, undressed, and took a shower in the dark, purposefully using up all the hot water. When the water finally turned cold twenty minutes later, I redressed and walked back to the window. The fire was still burning but everyone had left to go to bed. The cot was still lying where I had thrown it, on its side, by the picnic bench.
I sat at the small dining table, thought about turning on the lamp to read but then I saw them. Catherine and Samuel, sitting side by side on top of Joshua’s trailer. They were facing away from me, sitting the way Catherine and I had been, the day she’d come back from my apartment. It reminded me of the first time I’d seen them, at the club. How I thought they were a couple, and as I thought about it, how I had been way off target, Catherine scooted closer to Samuel and put her hand to his neck. He turned his head and she pulled him toward her. I couldn’t see very much in the dark, with only the firelight illuminating them, so I couldn’t tell if they were doing what I thought they were doing. Kissing. But it sure looked like it.
Like the anger that had come up out of nowhere earlier, so did what I was feeling now. Jealousy. I was actually jealous. And very much so.
chapter twenty-two
on the road again
The following morning I stayed in bed longer than usual, staring up at the ceiling, thinking. It wasn’t until I could hear voices coming from the picnic table that I finally got up, pulled on my boots, and went to wash up and brush my teeth. I lingered inside for a while, watching through the front window as Abby, laughing and smiling in a way she never did when I was around, sat eating with Samuel and Catherine. I felt a hard, unkind urge to jump out of the RV and yell at her “What are you laughing about blondie? You’ve been angry with me this whole time when it’s her you should be mad at. You’re so damned smart, you can’t even figure out that your friends here are lovers? It’s her you should be avoiding and threatening to blow up, not me. And she ruined your towels. It was her!” But it would be a petty and mean thing to do and I was determined not to be that kind of person.
I didn’t even know what it was I was so angry about, which made me angrier. I had gotten over the whole ear pierced thing. Big deal, I didn’t know where ball lightning came from either and I had managed to live with that little mystery for years. No, it was what I had seen last night that really bothered me, but why? It was possible, wasn’t it, that all the time I spent with Samuel, working on cars, had led to something else. Maybe somewhere along the line I had started to look at him differently. As more than just a friend.
It was possible, I suppose, but what if I was mistaking the emotion? What if I was just mad at Catherine? She had a boyfriend. She was cheating on him. Or was it Samuel she was cheating on? That’s even worse. I didn’t know who that other guy was, I didn’t know whether he was a good person or not, but I knew Samuel, and I knew he didn’t deserve to be betrayed in that way. That must be it. All her talk about keeping her promise, about remaining faithful to her word meant nothing if she could so easily be unfaithful to a relationship. She was a hypocrite and not a very good friend now that I thought about it. All this time I had had to endure Abby’s crabbiness and she had let it go on knowing she was the one who Abby should be upset with. She was happy to have that hostile attitude deflected from her on to me. How could I have been that ignorant? How did I not see it? It was Catherine, not me, Samuel had been looking at all that time, all those times I thought he was pining for me.
But what I thought I was really upset about was the fact that Catherine had been using me as a buffer. I thought we were friends. I thought I finally had a close female friend I could relate to, who I could talk to. She knew what it was like, to lose a mother at a young age, she didn’t insist on talking about nothing but men, she had a good sense of humor, she was intelligent, she was loyal (or so I thought), and I liked her. But everything had been all an act. It was all meaningless.
It was only hunger that made me leave the RV and join them at the table, but I waited long enough for Abby to return to her RV. I was still too angry. I didn’t trust myself not to blab about everything and possibly get myself kicked out. I was still being hunted down after all, and like it or not, I was stuck.
As I walked toward the table, Samuel scooted over, patting the space next to him and moving his enormous bowl of shredded wheat. I sat, and it put me directly in front of Catherine, who had only a paper cup of coffee in front of her.
She tried to make eye contact with me but I looked over toward Joshua who, along with Kam, had arrived shortly after Abby left. He was pulling a bright pink Pop Tart out of an old lime-green toaster sitting on the table connected to a small generator off to the side. The lever on the toaster was missing the plastic handle it had originally come with and only a rusty piece of metal remained. It really was a wonder that the whole place hadn’t been burnt to a crisp yet.
He stacked four layers of the pastries, two pink, two brown, one on top of the other and was eating them like a sandwich while Kam was scrounging around inside of a cereal box with a picture of a cartoon kangaroo on the front of it.
“We got you your favorite coffee,” Catherine said, sliding a steaming paper cup in front of me.
“I don’t have a favorite type of coffee,” I said, while I poured cereal into the bowl Samuel had placed in front of me. I hadn’t bothered to look at the box so what poured out were colorful balls of puffed wheat and I just knew they were going to be too sugary for my taste.
“I could have sworn you said vanilla cream was your fav—“
“You don’t know everything about me.” I cut her off and looked directly at her. She looked taken aback but only nodded her head and left the coffee where it was.
Samuel was staring between her and me as if he expected something to explode, then slowly, still keeping his eyes on us, lifted his spoon and started to eat again.
Catherine looked at the dry cereal in my bowl and reached over for a jug of milk.
“Kam, would you pass me the milk please?” I asked, and Kam, oblivious to any tension at the table, despite last night, dropped the small plastic package he’d pulled from the cereal box, lifted the glass jug full of milk in front of him, and handed it over to me. His long arms easily reaching across the table. Then he went back to opening whatever it was he’d found in the box.
Catherine followed everything with her eyes, as did Samuel, and as I started to pour milk into my bowl I could see them out of the corner of my eye, having a silent conversation. “What in the hell is wrong with her?” or else “Meet me on top of the trailer again tonight?” who knows, who cares?
“Emile,” Catherine said, popping the top of her travel cup on and off, “are you still upset about the earring thing because—“
“Leave it,” I said, waving one of my hands in front of me to stop her from talking, “it doesn’t matter. Keep your secrets. I don’t want to know any of it. Your job is to keep me safe, not be my friend. I get it.”
Her jaw clenched, her eyes darkened and I was scared for a moment that I’d gone too far. She stared at me for a long time and I had no idea what she was thinking, but I started to worry. Was she about to do what I thought? Tell me to pack my stuff? That I was getting my wish, we would be leaving first thing after breakfast? I wasn’t worth whatever it was she was getting out of this deal?
But, thankfully, finally, she only said “Fine,” and looked away.
Samuel turned to me, disappointment in his face, as if seeing for the first time that I wasn’t actually the sweet accommodating person I had been pretending to be. And now I was angry with him too for siding with her. What is wrong with me?
“So,” he said, running his hand through his hair, “Emi. Today is the day you get to learn all about mufflers.”
“Sounds fascinating,” I said, in a flat voice, keeping my eyes on my bowl of cereal without looking up or eating. I had lost my appetite. Instead of feeling good and justified about venting, I felt horrible. I turned and watched Kam and Joshua instead. They’d both dug out little plastic toy instruments from their respective boxes of cereals. Kam, a small green flute, Joshua, a bright red kazoo, and they were playing a recognizable, if not good, rendition of Fur Elise on them. Mustard played along by howling.
“The thing about mufflers—“ Samuel began, still trying to defuse the situation, but he was cut short by a distant sound I barely heard over the music and Mustard’s howling: two short car honks. I didn’t think anything of it but Joshua reacted instantaneously. The kazoo fell out of his hand as he stood up knocking his thighs against the table causing both my and Samuel’s cereal bowls to tip over, milk sloshing onto my legs as it seeped between the cracks. He ran towards the front entrance, around and behind the mountain of junk, Mustard running close behind him, barking, growling.
Everyone but me had gotten to their feet and Catherine grabbed me by the wrist, pulling me up out of my seat.
“In your RV, now, and don’t come out until we say so,” she said urgently, without looking at me.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Now,” she said sharply, and let go of my wrist. I walked quickly to the RV and heard Catherine barking orders behind me.
“Samuel, the car, Kam, stay with her.”
Only twenty seconds after I closed the door behind me, Samuel drove his car around and in front of Kam, who remained by the RV, keeping guard.
Daniel’s car came skidding to a stop in front of Abby’s RV only seconds after, and he jumped out, whistling loudly, two fingers in his mouth.
“Abby, get out here,” he yelled, pounding on her door.
She opened the door, a towel wrapped around her head and pink fuzzy slippers on her feet.
“What is it? What’s going on?” she asked, only mildly interested.
“Cops. We’ve got to get rid of them.”
She looked toward my RV and shook her head. Nothing but trouble was what she was thinking. I knew it.
She retreated, back behind her door and I thought she was just going to ignore everything. It wasn’t her problem, she’d be happy to see me hauled away in handcuffs. I don’t know why the police would handcuff me but that’s what I pictured. But she opened the door only a minute or two later, fully dressed, hair damp, but free of the towel.
Catherine emerged from Joshua’s trailer, a fully packed backpack hanging from one of her shoulders, another empty one in her hand and approached Abby.
“You guys are leaving aren’t you?” Abby asked her.
“Please, don’t mess this up.” Catherine reached out with her free hand, placed it on Abby’s arm, but Abby pushed it away.
“It’s not her fault, Abby, you know that.”
Abby turned to look at the open window I was staring out of and I ducked down a second too late. By the time I straightened back up, Daniel was gone, and Abby was standing next to Kam by the picnic table. Catherine jumped up into the RV.
“Grab some things, only a few, we need to leave. Here.” She handed me the empty backpack.
“What’s happening?” I asked, as I grabbed first my picture, then my little Lulu figurine, and then my book. Catherine was a bit more practical than I was and went to retrieve a few changes of clothes from the sleeping area.
