Becoming Chloe (8 page)

The rain has come back. I can hear it pounding on the roof. I’m so sleepy, and I’m really hoping this won’t get too complicated.

Then again, it’s Chloe.

I look out the back window and there she is, squatting by the grave in the pouring rain, her knees doubled up under her wet nightshirt, her hair plastered down all around her head. If I leave her out there, she’ll freeze. If I go out and get her, I’ll freeze.

I go out and get her.

I put one hand on her shoulder. “Chlo—”

She jumps up and grabs me. The way I’d expect her to grab on if she was about to fall off a twenty-story building. Then again, maybe she is, and I’m just too blind to know it.

“I’m scared, Jordy.”

“I know. I can tell. It’s okay. Are you scared of me dying?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you scared I’ll leave you?”

“I don’t think you’d do that.”

“What are you scared of?”

“I don’t know.”

“What does it feel like? Tell me what it feels like, Chlo.”

She never answers.

The rain is running into my eyes, and the cold is setting up a slight tremble right in the center of me. Once upon a time that would’ve been the only way I could find the center of me. But tonight I’m unfortunately aware of its location.

She’s shaking a little bit again, even though it’s not cold in here.

This is definitely not about cold. Something rattled her deeply, and I can’t get in to know what, because I can’t get deeply into Chloe. Nobody can. As far as I know. I didn’t even know Chloe had a deep place to get into.

I lie with her while she goes to sleep. She seems to have exhausted herself with that sudden burst of terror. Terror. Chloe.

Chloe’s never scared of anything.

But anyway, she’s going off to sleep now, and it seems to be over.

It has to have been Bruno’s death. What else could it be?

The worst is over now. New York is just a bad memory, Bruno is buried, Chloe and I are slightly battered but still here.

We’re safe and warm, we’re together, we’re still here.

Whenever I see something raise its head for the first time and then settle again, I never like to think it’s the tip of an iceberg.

I always like to figure it’s a one-time thing that’ll never be seen or heard from again.

I wake in the middle of the night to find Chloe sitting up on the edge of the bed. Caught in the act of not sleeping. She has her back to me, but the minute I wake up, she turns to look, as if she can hear my eyes open. Or maybe she’s been looking at me a lot.

I don’t know.

“When Otis dies,” she says, “we’re going to need a whole new plan.”

I’m surprised. I didn’t know Chloe even thought about plans.

I thought she left all the planning up to me.

In the morning she’s sort of okay and sort of not. She’s not shaking, not outwardly scared, but there’s something. Some little shadow behind her eyes where there used to be clear skies every day. We lie together for a long time, and I’m half wondering if Otis is okay. But I’m half wondering if Chloe is okay, too, so I put off checking on Otis. Poor Otis. Just lost his best friend.

I wonder if that’ll make him less likely to stick around, like the husbands and wives that die within a few months of each other.

As if she were hearing me think, Chloe says, “When Otis dies, where will we live?”

“I don’t know, Chlo.”

“Who gets the house when he dies? Maybe they won’t let us live here. Maybe they’ll sell the house and the person who buys it’ll have a big family and want the whole house.”

“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, Chlo.”

“What bridge?”

“Not a real bridge. It’s an expression. It means don’t worry about a problem until it comes.”

I realize briefly why I never used that phrase with Chloe before.

Because, as far as I can remember, this is the first time she ever crossed a bridge we hadn’t yet come to.

I go up front after a while to check on Otis. When he sees me coming he grabs a tissue and wipes at his face, roughly, like he can still make it look like something more manly than crying.

“Thanks for giving him a good proper burial,” he says.

“No problem, Otis. He deserved it.”

Then we sit quietly for a moment, and I’m not sure what to say. I’ll get up and make his breakfast soon, but in the meantime it feels like something more needs saying.

Otis nods a moment. His eyes are puffy and swollen. “I know you think I’m a stupid old man, but I know what’s what. And I’m not sure she’s so stupid.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”

“You act like you buy it.”

“I act like it’s the truth most of the time. Because most of the time it’s the truth. But when she wants to be smart she just is.”

“Which means she just is. All the time.”

We sit quietly for a minute. I’m wondering if I should say more.

“There was a doctor in New York,” I say, “who thought it might be like a defense for her. He barely knew her, so I couldn’t figure out why he said that. It sounded like a weird thing for him to say out of nowhere at the time. But he still could have been right.”

“She had a hard life?”

“Very.”

“For example . . . ?”

“I really don’t know what happened before I met her. Except that it was bad.” I know it involved a lot of rape, but I can’t bring myself to say that out loud to Otis. “What’s beginning to worry me . . .” Then I decide not to finish that thought.

“What?” Otis says.

“Nothing. What do you want for breakfast?”

“What’s beginning to worry you?”

“Nothing. How about oatmeal with walnuts?”

“Spill it out, boy.”

Shit. “Okay. I asked the doctor if it was something she might get over. You know, if somebody cared enough to give her a better life and make her feel secure. He didn’t know. And I didn’t know if I was willing to try. But now that we’re together, and she’s getting more secure, I worry that . . .” I haven’t even formed this into words yet in my head, and now I’m getting ready to do it out loud. No turning back. “What if all that simpleminded stuff starts falling away and then she just has no defenses?”

While nobody is answering I listen to his bedside clock ticking.

How he can even sleep with such an enormous ticking, I’ll never know.

After a time Otis says, “Oatmeal with walnuts’ll be just fine.”

I get up to go make it for him. Just as I’m leaving the room, he says, “You can’t just keep her unhappy.”

I stop with one hand on the door frame. “I know.”

“So there’s no way to go but forward. Cross that bridge when you come to it.”

Good advice, I think.

I make Otis his supper at five p.m. sharp, just the way he likes it. Grilled cheese sandwich, carrot sticks, creamed corn, chocolate pudding cup. If that sounds cruel, I should note that this is Otis’s idea of the perfect meal. I leave Chloe to handle the dinner dishes, and I go off to work.

Chloe and Otis babysit each other while I wait tables. Maybe I’m making too much out of too little, but the more time goes on, the more I feel like I can’t trust Chloe to be alone. I mean, I never really left her alone much, because she might wander off or do something stupid. But she’s been different lately, switching suddenly into these out-of-nowhere moods that feel very frightened or very dark. So now I’m thinking she might do something really stupid. But I can’t put my finger on why I think that. I just feel better when she and Otis have each other.

The reason I’m working a job is because Otis is going downhill fast.

For quite a while now his sister has paid us a little each month to look after him, and we also get the apartment for free.

And we’ve gotten by just fine. But when Otis dies, she’ll sell the house, and we’ll be out on the street. She’s told us quite frankly that she’ll put it up for sale immediately. So I’ve been hustling very hard for tips and putting money aside.

We all hope that Otis will live forever, but it just doesn’t seem to be going that way.

Everybody dies. Even Chloe knows that.

I work at a fancy dinner restaurant downtown. I have to park Otis’s old truck two or three blocks away because it doesn’t have much muffler. It’s one of those restaurants that’s all about ambience.

I have to be part of it. Or at least not detract.

Every now and then we get a family or a business dinner, but mostly it’s couples. They make me feel sad for reasons I can’t entirely pin down.

But tonight there’s a couple that breaks through that fog. By being more like me. A nice-looking guy in his late forties with a pretty young guy about my age who is obviously his date. They both order the lobster. I get one meal per shift but I can’t have filet mignon or lobster. I could if I had a financially stable boyfriend in his late forties, but I don’t. I have a noisy old pickup that’s not mine, a cranky old man who’s dying on me, a job waiting tables, and Chloe.

After I take their order I slip into the bathroom and lock myself in and look at my own face in the mirror. To see if I’m still pretty. Not enough, I guess. The scar on my forehead is ugly. It detracts from the overall picture. Breaks up the purity of the scene, making me seem like damaged goods. And my eyes look old to me, older than I really am. I look tired.

I guess I knew I was tired. I just didn’t know I looked it.

Later, after we close, I get to eat. My one really great meal of the day. I usually choose the salmon, because that’s Chloe’s favorite.

I always bring half home in a doggie bag for her. I sit outside on the patio to eat, even though it’s a little cold out. I figure that way none of the other waiters will come sit with me. But tonight Marlon does, because he wants to smoke.

He has a half-finished bottle of wine that he rescued before it could get thrown out. He gestures in my direction, offering to fill my empty water glass. He’s pretty enough, and he has a look like nothing could tire him out. Whatever it is, he could get the best of it. At least, that’s what it says in his eyes.

Sometimes I think people lie to the world with their eyes. If they still can.

I shake my head.

“Don’t drink?”

“No.”

“Don’t like it?”

“Oh, I like it fine,” I say. “I just don’t start because if I start I don’t stop.”

“So? Don’t stop. A bunch of us are going out partying, why don’t you come? You look like you could use a little R

and R.”

“No. Sorry. My . . . wife is waiting up for me at home.” It’s easier to lie.

“So? Bring her.”

“Oh. No. I don’t think so. She’s been kind of . . . She’s not really much into partying. She’s been kind of depressed.”

“Oh,” Marlon says. “Sorry.”

I never really liked Marlon. Or any of the others, really. I’m sure they’re okay people, but my world and their worlds don’t intersect at any point. We really have nothing in common.

I pack up half my salmon to take home to Chloe.

Marlon says, “Just so you don’t end up down there with her.”

“I’m fine,” I say. And I am. I’m strong. I’m pretty enough.

Nothing tires me out. Whatever it is, I can get the best of it. “I’m just going to go home.”

When I get home, I go into the main house first. Chloe is asleep on the end of Otis’s bed, curled up like a good dog. Otis is wide awake. Which is weird, because it’s after eleven. Otis is never awake when I get home. Sometimes he’s not even awake when I leave. On his dinner tray is a card-sized envelope with a little pre-made bow stuck on it. I have no idea what that’s about and it doesn’t seem right to ask. Maybe Chloe gave him a present.

She’s like that.

Otis looks a little ruffled, so I sit on the edge of his bed and we chat.

“Something wrong, Otis?”

“Oh, the girl and I just had us a long talk. Hard to go to sleep after that.”

“Not for her, apparently.”

We both look down at her for a moment, watching her sleep.

Then Otis says, “Get her some help, son. Professional help.

And do it soon.”

I feel a cold pit in my belly because he knows something I don’t. “What happened, Otis?”

“Nothing. We just talked. But I’m telling you, she needs help. The stuff she’s seen and the stuff has happened to her, there’s no way she could hold that up all by herself.”

“She told you about the time before I met her?”

“From the time she was born till the day she hooked up with you. Everything.”

“She never told me any of that.”

“She’s got her reasons, boy. She knows once you lay some stuff like that on a person they just don’t set it down again. The more that person loves her, the harder it sits.”

“Tell me, Otis.”

“Nope. I swore I wouldn’t. I’m just telling you this. Get her some help to deal with this stuff. She can’t do it alone, and you’re not enough, either, no matter what you might want to think. You can get some help on the money. You can call the county, tell ’em you’re low income. There’s help out there.”

“Okay, Otis. If you think that’s the best thing.”

“Promise me, Jordan.”

He never called me by my name before. As far as I can remember.

This is a first.

“Okay. I promise. I’ll get her some professional help.”

Otis sighs, and the sigh seems to shrink him two or more sizes. “Okay, good. Now, here, this is for you. But you can’t open it till you get back in your own place.” He hands me the envelope with the bow. Chloe must’ve helped him decorate.

“Okay, Otis, thanks.”

I put it in my shirt pocket, squashing the bow slightly. But I can’t bring myself to take the bow off. If it wasn’t important, they wouldn’t have conspired to put it there. I pick up Chloe in a fireman’s carry and head out of Otis’s room.

“Jordan,” he says. “You’re okay. I’m sorry what I said, not being sure about you at first. You’re a good boy.”

“Well, that’s okay, Otis. I wasn’t sure about you at first, either.

But I like you fine now.”

He nods and closes his eyes.

Chloe wakes up when I try to undress her and get her into bed.

“Jordy,” she says, “did you open your present?”

“Not yet. I will in a minute. How come you told Otis all that stuff you’d never tell me?”