fresh set on the desk for her. It was a small room, and I didn’t need everything in it. I hesitated about the stereo, then left it for her.
“OK,” I said. In the front room she was sitting in my dad’s reading chair, staring out the dark window to the yard, where the Jacksons’ dog, Mabel, was staring back.
She said, “You won’t hardly even know I’m here.”
The house was about nine hundred square feet. I was pretty sure I’d know exactly where she was.
She made her way to my bedroom, a little warily. I stepped back so as not to crowd her. She looked around, gave the mattress a squeeze. “OK then,” she said.
The stuff in her car wasn’t exactly what you’d call packed; it was more just thrown in there piece by piece, so we carried it into the house best we could, leaving a trail of items across the lawn and down the hall to her room—a Red Wings sock, a half-eaten Snickers, a Radiohead CD. When the car was about half empty she said, “OK, that’s probably enough stuff,” and she locked it up.
“You hungry?” I said as we walked inside.
She looked surprised by the question. “No. Just tired.” She went in my room and I waited, but she didn’t come out.
T hat night in my dad’s bed I rode out my usual ambush of night fears, but now there were new ones related to this girl. I imagined her going from house to house each night, nestling in and then stripping your place clean and driving off at dawn in that packed-tight car. An anti-Santa, relieving you of your attachments. But then I heard a soft cough on the other side of the wall, and a while later there was a yawn and a creak of the mattress. My mattress. She was falling asleep like anyone, filling the house with her breath, her real life. I slept like the dead. I dreamed my mother came back. She came knocking at the window and I got up and pulled her in, scraping her stomach on the sill until we tumbled down in each other’s arms. It was eleven years since I last saw her but she hadn’t aged. Her hair was still the same black flapper’s mop. She said, “Your father has finally stopped harassing me with his phone calls. What happened?” And I gave her the rough outlines of his demise. She listened without much reaction. I screwed up my courage to ask, “So will you move back, now that he’s gone?” But I could see her retreating even before I finished the question. So I closed my eyes to stop seeing her that way and I dozed off in her arms and dreamed another dream of her, a better dream inside the first one. We were floating over the city in a hot air balloon looking down at the lights and the big dark holes where lights used to be, over the vast, abandoned central depot and down Michigan Avenue toward the old heart of town. She was a great explorer and I was her navigator. Her hair flew up around her face and she leaned over the edge of the balloon’s basket, giving me a look so bright and intense it was like she had just given birth, and I gasped and grinned back at her until she said, “Don’t you have anything bigger than this to dream of?”
So I did what I knew she wanted me to do: I climbed over the edge of the basket and jumped, and woke up. It was like I’d been infected by my dad’s pillows and taken on his fever dreams from the very end. And I felt pained for him all over again, if that was the kind of dream his last dreams had been.
The house was quiet and bright by then so I got up and stumbled toward the bathroom door, which was open, though it shouldn’t have been, because inside, there was Molly. Sprawled in the bathtub, naked and gone. The water was cold. Her mouth hung open. She was like something washed up on my shoreline.
There was no blood anywhere, just a few pill bottles floating in the water, with my dad’s name on the labels. I dropped to my knees and squeezed her wrist, waiting—fuckit, praying. In a way, every body is the same in the end, cool and lackluster, abandoned. “Goddamnit,” I
“OK,” I said. In the front room she was sitting in my dad’s reading chair, staring out the dark window to the yard, where the Jacksons’ dog, Mabel, was staring back.
She said, “You won’t hardly even know I’m here.”
The house was about nine hundred square feet. I was pretty sure I’d know exactly where she was.
She made her way to my bedroom, a little warily. I stepped back so as not to crowd her. She looked around, gave the mattress a squeeze. “OK then,” she said.
The stuff in her car wasn’t exactly what you’d call packed; it was more just thrown in there piece by piece, so we carried it into the house best we could, leaving a trail of items across the lawn and down the hall to her room—a Red Wings sock, a half-eaten Snickers, a Radiohead CD. When the car was about half empty she said, “OK, that’s probably enough stuff,” and she locked it up.
“You hungry?” I said as we walked inside.
She looked surprised by the question. “No. Just tired.” She went in my room and I waited, but she didn’t come out.
T hat night in my dad’s bed I rode out my usual ambush of night fears, but now there were new ones related to this girl. I imagined her going from house to house each night, nestling in and then stripping your place clean and driving off at dawn in that packed-tight car. An anti-Santa, relieving you of your attachments. But then I heard a soft cough on the other side of the wall, and a while later there was a yawn and a creak of the mattress. My mattress. She was falling asleep like anyone, filling the house with her breath, her real life. I slept like the dead. I dreamed my mother came back. She came knocking at the window and I got up and pulled her in, scraping her stomach on the sill until we tumbled down in each other’s arms. It was eleven years since I last saw her but she hadn’t aged. Her hair was still the same black flapper’s mop. She said, “Your father has finally stopped harassing me with his phone calls. What happened?” And I gave her the rough outlines of his demise. She listened without much reaction. I screwed up my courage to ask, “So will you move back, now that he’s gone?” But I could see her retreating even before I finished the question. So I closed my eyes to stop seeing her that way and I dozed off in her arms and dreamed another dream of her, a better dream inside the first one. We were floating over the city in a hot air balloon looking down at the lights and the big dark holes where lights used to be, over the vast, abandoned central depot and down Michigan Avenue toward the old heart of town. She was a great explorer and I was her navigator. Her hair flew up around her face and she leaned over the edge of the balloon’s basket, giving me a look so bright and intense it was like she had just given birth, and I gasped and grinned back at her until she said, “Don’t you have anything bigger than this to dream of?”
So I did what I knew she wanted me to do: I climbed over the edge of the basket and jumped, and woke up. It was like I’d been infected by my dad’s pillows and taken on his fever dreams from the very end. And I felt pained for him all over again, if that was the kind of dream his last dreams had been.
The house was quiet and bright by then so I got up and stumbled toward the bathroom door, which was open, though it shouldn’t have been, because inside, there was Molly. Sprawled in the bathtub, naked and gone. The water was cold. Her mouth hung open. She was like something washed up on my shoreline.
There was no blood anywhere, just a few pill bottles floating in the water, with my dad’s name on the labels. I dropped to my knees and squeezed her wrist, waiting—fuckit, praying. In a way, every body is the same in the end, cool and lackluster, abandoned. “Goddamnit,” I
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