Page 48 of Gone Tonight
My mother turns to me. “What are you thinking about?”
I don’t hesitate. “Chocolate.”
She laughs. “The candy didn’t do it for you?”
“That was just a dessert appetizer.”
“Tell you what. Let’s pick up a box of mix and make some brownies when we get home.”
“Deal.”
While the brownies bake, I’ll close the door to my room and get out my legal pad and write down every single detail of RJ’s I can remember my mother recounting.
CHAPTER EIGHTEENRUTH
I stand in front of my closet, surveying my clothes. No chic designer outfit has spontaneously materialized, so I reach for a khaki skirt and a red top with spaghetti straps that I bought at a thrift store several years ago.
Catherine is in the living room, flipping through TV channels. Snippets of different programs fill the air: A man with a British accent declares a pastry filling “disappointing”; a girl pleads with her father to get her a horse; and then the buzzer of a game show blares and a woman cries, “Dolly Parton!” Finally, I hear the familiar dialogue of the movieBridesmaids.
Catherine stays on that channel. It sounds like she’s settling in for the evening.
I don’t want to leave my daughter, but if I don’t get out of the apartment for a few hours I’m going to lose it.
This morning felt surreal. Seeing our former neighborhood unnerved me even more than I anticipated. The apartment next to our old one still had the same silvery wind chimes dangling from the fire escape rail, which means our neighbor hasn’t moved.
The woman with the wind chimes made overtures to us while we lived there. I think she was lonely. She brought over muffins whenwe moved in and let Catherine play with the stray cats she was always taking in. When one of the cats escaped and went missing, she came over and pressed a flyer with the cat’s photo into my hands and lingered, clearly yearning for company, until I pretended I had an urgent errand to run.
As I looked up at those wind chimes earlier today, I was gripped with the urge to get out of town as fast as possible.
I didn’t like living in that apartment. Even though I kept the place scrupulously clean, I once found a dead mouse under Catherine’s bed. Being back in this neighborhood made me feel itchy.
I tried to mask my feelings, but I couldn’t help sagging in relief when Catherine agreed to my suggestion that we eat our subs in the Bonneville because the deli was so crowded. It was easy to look out the windshield at approaching pedestrians from my vantage point, and the side mirror let me keep tabs on what was going on behind me. The day was bright, which meant Catherine didn’t question the fact that I was wearing my oversized sunglasses.
I couldn’t believe my good luck when she wanted to leave after an hour. The only truly dangerous moment came when she suggested stopping by the steakhouse. I deflected her a little too roughly, but after a while the tension between us dissipated.
A Tootsie Pop can be an effective way to bridge the distance between a mother and daughter who share the curse of a sweet tooth.
After I finish changing, I walk into the bathroom and brush my teeth to get rid of any remaining traces of the single small brownie I ate.
I would’ve loved to have had seconds—just like I craved eating the other half of my sub instead of wrapping it up and giving it to a homeless guy—but being at this weight suits my purposes. I need to look as different as possible from the curvy, long-haired girl I was in high school.
The bones in my face are more prominent now, and my body shape has changed. Still, someone from my past could recognize me if they glimpsed me at the right angle in the right light.
It happened once before, when Catherine was in tenth grade, backwhen we lived in Lancaster. It’s why I felt on the verge of a panic attack the entire time we were there today.
The day I heard someone call my old name, it was gloomy and gray, with the slightest drizzle coming down. If the weather had been different, everything else would have been, too.
I was walking to the drugstore when a woman strolling toward me suddenly stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, her expression as shocked as if she’d seen a ghost.
She must have traded her glasses for contact lenses, but I still recognized her: Rosie, the nice girl from my Poms squad. The last time I’d seen her was when she’d waited for me by my car with my backpack and water bottle on the afternoon Coach ordered me into his office.
I ducked my head and quickly passed her, kicking myself for not having on my sunglasses like I almost always did when I was outdoors. She called out my old name with a question in her voice, as if she wasn’t sure it was really me, but I didn’t turn around. “Timmy and I became friends! He’s doing well!” she yelled, but I didn’t even react to that. I kept walking past the drugstore, then I rounded the corner and ran until my lungs felt like they would explode.
We moved to Harrisburg the next day.
Now I step into the living room, where Catherine is curled on the couch, her feet tucked beneath her. On the coffee table in front of her is the journal she bought for me. The page is open to my entry.
When she sees me, she reaches for the remote control and pauses her movie. “I’d love it if you kept writing in this. Or we could do it together.”
