Follow Me (21 page)

F
or years I’ve used this cheap slab of plywood as my desk. It’s wide enough to absorb the clutter. Along with the screen and
keyboard, there’s a pen, a crumpled tissue, a yarn coaster knitted by my boyfriend’s mother, a glass paperweight in the shape
of a heart, a bottle of clear nail polish, a pad of yellow Post-its, an envelope with a bill to be paid, and all 2,664 pages
of
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary.

Outside, the mail carrier slides the door to his truck closed and crosses the street, reaching into his duffel to take out
a package as he approaches the house next door. On the house’s brick side facing our apartment, there’s a shadow play going
on — mottled, shifting shapes from the silver maple’s wavering branches. A passing car is reflected in the glass of the neighbor’s
kitchen window, slipping in and out of view. Their azaleas are in bloom, the rhododendrons swollen, ready to pop, and their
lawn, groomed by landscapers, is a bright, pure green.

It seems strange that the dire escalations on the other side of the world aren’t registered here; there’s no smoke in the
air, no blood spray speckling the sidewalk. We take this calm for granted. Spaces are wide in this region, buildings are low,
most families carry more debt than they’ll ever be able to pay off in their lifetimes. There’s little here that would be worth
the risk of an attack, though at the same time I’d wager that there’s nothing not worth the risk of a story.

The ladybug bumping against my windowpane, trying to get in.

A woman in sweats pushing a stroller along the sidewalk.

The wail of a siren in the distance.

The words hoarded in this box of a machine, along with all the dubious information available at the touch of a key.

It was in one of the neglected, asphalt-shingled houses by the train tracks on the other side of the city where I assume I
was conceived, over in the Maplewood neighborhood or maybe in Edgerton or Dutchtown — in a rented room, in the dark secrecy
of an August night, a freight train laboring along behind the house, silt swelling the cracks between the floorboards, cigarette
burns scarring the rugs.

In the one photograph I have of my parents together, a fading Polaroid from 1974, they’re sitting facing each other, surrounded
by their friends, at a picnic table cluttered with empty beer bottles. But when I imagine them alone together, I picture a
satin sky outside the window, the curtains wafting, the chugging of a freight train filling the room along with the rattling
and knocking of the headboard. And in the cave of sheets, pure happiness, a man and a woman rediscovering the potentials of
their bodies and confirming that what they’d already experienced with each other the previous month and the month before could
be found and repeated and still enjoyed as if for the first time.

I know from my mother that my father wasn’t her first sexual partner, but he was the one she considered her first real love.
He was the one who wanted to be sure that she was satisfied every step of the way, with whispers that must have been as tantalizing
as his stroking fingers.

How does it feel? Do you like it?

Mmm, that’s all right…

Baby Doll
and
Buster Boy,
they took to calling each other behind the closed door, probably in jest at first, or maybe in an attempt to slow the momentum
of their emotions with some foolishness because they would already have started to sense without saying it that such a heady
rush toward love, into love, was perilous.

But doesn’t it feel good when I —

And I —

They hadn’t bothered to consider legitimizing their connection with a formal engagement. They believed that the freedom to
experience love without commitment, without obligation, was essential if they were going to enjoy a future together. But even
more powerful than the indulgence of freedom was the sense that in each other they’d found their reward, which they’d earned
simply through the hard work of spending their entire childhoods apart, unaware of each other’s presence. How was it possible
that they both had been in the world for so long, and neither one had known of the other’s existence? In the midst of their
infatuation, they became convinced that they were meant for each other, it couldn’t be any other way. If they’d suffered loneliness
through their earlier years, it was part of the necessary preface to their happiness. They had to suffer in order to recognize
the value of what they’d found in each other, with each other.

Surely they didn’t mind that dingy setting — the sheets’ scratchy cotton, the stifling air in the room, the thin mattress,
the noise of the trains. And even if they hadn’t bothered to eat dinner beforehand, they wouldn’t have been distracted by
hunger. They’d eat each other, nibble and drink to the point of satiation and beyond, awakening after a sleepy pause to their
desire, which would have seemed as fresh as ever. Baby Doll and Buster Boy, as oblivious to their surroundings as fairy-tale
children lost in the woods.

They weren’t children in legal terms. They were both registered voters, old enough to drink and get drunk, old enough to hold
jobs and report their income to the IRS. He was a graduate of the state university in Buffalo, while she was a student at
a small college downstate. Given the troubles both experienced in childhood, they liked to say to each other that they’d been
around the block. And yet I can see in the photograph that there’s an innocent carelessness visible on the smooth skin of
their faces, along with a vague expression of hope, as though they know they’re deserving and are patiently waiting for their
reward.

They were each other’s reward, these sloppy, ragged spirits, long hair — his tinged strawberry, hers more auburn — cut in
a straight line across the middle of their backs, he with the wisps of a red beard, she with rhinestone baubles dangling from
her ears, he with the pocket of a dimple on his right cheek, she with a dimple on her left. And how about this: according
to my mother, they discovered that they’d both gone back to see
Five Easy Pieces
a second time the week it was released because of that one great scene, when Jack Nicholson jumps up on that flatbed truck
in a traffic jam and plays the piano. They also found out that they both liked to watch
The Dating Game,
along with Minnie Pearl in
Hee Haw.
And they both knew all the words to “Psychedelic Shack” by the Temptations.

Psychedelic Shack, that’s where it’s at, oh yeah.

As they got to know each other better, they discovered other similarities. They both loved to laugh at bad jokes, to gargle
with whiskey, to smoke a bong, to play shortstop, to ride the Jack Rabbit at Seabreeze and scream until they were hoarse,
to fall asleep listening to music on headphones, and to dive into a cold lake on a hot day. Thanks to luck and destiny, they’d
found each other in the crowd, and here they were, in one of the dingy rooms he rented by the month. She rested her head on
his chest, listened to the thumping of his heart while he held her hand with his, bringing her fingertips to his mouth to
taste her salty skin again. The sound of the passing train as it slowed down on its approach to a crossroad reminded them
that they were captives of time, rousing in both of them a premonition of the weeks they’d be apart while he was driving his
company’s van in its zigzag route across the country and she was at school.

To have to wait so long to move in together struck them as one of the many unfair consequences of being poor. They had no
say over the responsibilities assigned to them and so they were left to drift toward the melancholy close of this scene, drawing
together once more before she had to go back to the house where she still lived during school breaks with her mother, my grandmother
Sally, who at that late hour would have been lying awake in her own bed, waiting for the creak of the door to signal that
her daughter was safely at home.

And I was waiting, too — waiting in the deep darkness of insentient potential for the strands to touch and stick and braid
together in an inextricable knot.

S
tep into the boat delicate barefoot tipping this way and that don’t lose your balance you can stand or sit there that’s better
sit and feel the river swells tip with the river swells sit and float and wave good-bye gently bobbing in a boat without oars
no oars in a boat you can’t stop from gliding or the river from flowing you’re not God after all you’re just a young woman
without oars in a boat turning around and around on a warm day sun on your face on the river your river like home if you had
a home it would be this the banks farther away than you could throw a stone but close enough to see all the different greens
of pine and melon and grass and waxy sumac on a sunlit afternoon you just a woman a young woman in a boat thinking what will
be will be it’s not your fault no more than being born just a young woman in a boat without oars gliding turning drifting
as the river widens and the current slows and still the boat moves across the flat water somehow the forest shrinking to a
solid line until it’s too far away to see only the hot sun beating down and a slight wind dying and the slow gliding motion
taking you farther from shore gentle tipping turning cool water at your toes wiggling toes water seeping through the shell
that should be made of wood but now that it’s too late you see is made of straw a boat made of straw whoever heard of a boat
made of straw adrift in the middle of a lake in the middle of the day the water rising seeping turning to a steady trickle
that will eventually submerge you a young woman in a boat a straw boat a sinking straw boat without oars.

Cold water rising.

Soggy straw unraveling.

Land nowhere in sight.

Look at the fix you’ve gotten yourself into this time, Sally.

Well, she was sure glad she knew how to swim.

Oh!” She gasped, sputtered, coughed up a lungful of sour lake water. Blinked. Sputtered some more. “Oh.”

“You been dreaming?” The question came from a girl in the seat next to her. As the girl grinned, she pressed the tip of her
tongue through the gap between her front teeth.

“Mmm,” Sally murmured, shaking her head to clear the fog of sleep.

“Was it a bad dream?” the girl asked. She was too old, at least sixteen, Sally judged, to be so forward with a stranger. Her
question invited an insulting answer. Really, though, she didn’t look like the kind who was easily insulted. With her crooked
smile, a band of blotchy freckles crossing the bridge of her pug nose, her hair a mess of brown curls, a comic book open on
her lap, she looked as though she expected the whole world to be nice to her.

When she’d given Sally long enough to reply, the girl offered, “I had a dream once.” Her front teeth came down on her lower
lip, and she chewed thoughtfully while Sally stared.

“You’ve only ever had one dream?” Sally asked.

“Yep.”

“In your whole life?”

“Yep.”

“What did you dream?”

“I dreamt I was throwing my Nestor a flake of hay, and he opened up his mouth and talked to me.”

“Who’s Nestor?”

“My Appaloos’.”

The bus creaked as it slowed for a traffic light. Turning to look over the back of the seat, Sally saw two new passengers
in addition to the girl. She must have slept right through at least one stop. She had no idea how long she’d been traveling,
though the cramps in her neck and legs probably meant that she’d been on the bus for at least a couple of hours.

“Don’t you want to know what he said?” the girl asked.

“Who?”

“Nestor, my Appaloos’.”

“Your horse?”

“Where you from? My guess is Canada.”

“Pennsylvania.”

“Well, I was close.”

“Not that close.” Sally said this harsher than she’d meant it. The girl looked down and seemed to be considering the remark.
Then she rolled up her comic book and tucked it in her pocket. She shook two cigarettes from a box. Sticking them both in
her mouth, she struck a match, lit them, and handed one to Sally. After smoking thoughtfully for a few minutes, the girl said,
“Nestor, he started tearing at his hay and then he stopped and looked at me. He gave a little snort. And he said one word.”

“Really?” Sally asked. “Your horse can talk?” She felt a little bit of interest and a lot of impatience.

“Sure, my horse can talk. And there’s a blue elephant driving the bus. What do you take me for? My oh my, lady. It was a dream!”

The girl stared past Sally, watching the activity in the street while the bus approached its next stop. “Where you headed?”
she asked after a few minutes.

“Rondo.”

The girl considered this. “We’re in Tuskee,” she said quietly.

“Where’s Tuskee?”

The girl’s expression flashed from incredulity to acceptance, as though in an instant she’d judged Sally to be a harmless
idiot and that was that. She gestured out the window, indicating,
There, that’s where Tuskee is.
Then she crushed her cigarette beneath her shoe and stood, reaching to lift a beat-up vinyl suitcase from the overhead rack.