Mosquitoland (23 page)

Maybe.

I twist the last bit of lipstick from the tube and stare at the reflection of my mother's room behind me. In my mind, the dream is still fresh: our old feet crossing the room slow as a freighter; our lipstick the paint, our face the canvas, we get to work; time and time again, we draw, but nothing sticks. Nothing except the war paint. Our only color.

It's a narrow place, where Mom ends and Mim begins.

Only a single letter's difference.

“How fitting,” I say aloud, raising the war paint to my left cheek. The two-sided arrow is first, headed straight for the bridge of my nose.

At that moment, from the depths of his canvas tomb, Stevie Wonder interrupts my proceedings with a wail. I pull the cell phone out of my bag and silence the ringer. “Give it up, my man. It's unrequited.”

I return to the mirror, ready for the stroke across my forehead, the bridge connecting both arr—

“I thought I might find you here.”

Hand to face, I am frozen. “What are you doing?”

A phone slaps shut. “Mim, I'm—”

“What the
hell
are you doing here?”

“Nice, Mim. Real nice.”

Motion returns. Without bothering to remove my unfinished war paint, I spin around and face my stepmother head-on. Actually, the war paint makes perfect sense.

“Fuck you, Kathy.”

She smiles, and her eyes fill with tears. With one hand, she rubs circles across the very slight bulge in her stomach, up and down, round and round. I can't help but wonder if little Isabel can feel her do this. Minding her own business, swimming along in the muck of her pre-birth—does she know there's a whole world outside, just waiting to love her, ruin her, disgust and admire her, disappoint and awe her? Does she know about us? Probably not, seeing as how she's about the size of a mango. God, if only she could plant those tiny little feet in there, just grab hold of Kathy's uterus with all her might, and make
that
her home sweet home. I'm sure it's tight quarters, but blimey, it's not much better out here.

“Mim, I can't imagine how you must feel. But you have to understand—your father and I have been
out of our minds
.” She steps into the room now, closer to me. “I know you blame me. But—”

“You're not my mother.”

I state this calmly, as a matter of fact, as if we're in court, and Kathy is trying to prove otherwise. She starts crying, and the thing she says next is a silver bullet.

“I don't have to be your mother to care about you.”

She's close enough to smell now: her recipe is equal parts sanitizer, tacos, and pigheaded denial. I remember . . .

BREAKING NEWS

“MIM, WHY DON'T
you have a seat?” said Dad.

“Why don't you drop dead?”

His signature sigh. Then, “Mary, sit. Your mothe—Kathy and I have something to tell you.”

“Oh my shit, Dad. Really?”

“God, Mim, language.”

I pointed at Kathy who looked like she was on the verge of tears. “That woman is not my mother. And I'm not Mary, not to you.”

“We have news, would you like to hear it, or not?”

“Barry . . .” Kathy started, then thought better of it.

“Fine, whatever.” I plopped down on Mom's old College Couch, the setting of so many vinyl-spinning memories. (Back in Ashland, after Mom left, Dad said he didn't want the couch anymore. Said it wouldn't match any of “our things.” I asked him who he meant by “our.” He said nothing. I said I would literally jump off the roof while simultaneously swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills before I'd go to Mississippi without this damn couch. That pretty much ended the conversation.) Before I knew it, Dad and Kathy were on the couch, too, wedging me in the middle. In the peripheral of my good eye, I saw them holding hands behind my head, and for a second, I tried to command my misplaced epiglottis into action. God, that would have been a vomit for the ages.

Kathy spoke first. Two words, simple enough on their own, but whose combined forces conjured a catastrophic pandemic of madness.

“I'm pregnant,” she whispered. Blushing, she traded smiles with my dad, then looked back at me. “Mim, you're going to have a baby sister.”

I knew my reaction was being carefully studied, as if, at any moment, I might jump through a closed window. Actually, that wasn't a bad idea.

“What are you, kidding?” I looked from one to the other. “You guys just got married, like, yesterday.”

Their smiles, already forced and nervous, grew downright twitchy. They looked at each other, then back at me, and before either could say a word, I knew the inevitable ending of this horrible story. It was just too damn predictable. I studied Kathy: for the first time, I noticed that yes, in fact, her breasts were slightly bigger; and yes, in fact, she had put on quite a few pounds since the wedding; and yes, in fact, her face looked a little reddish and inflated. Tears gathered in her eyes as she watched me figure it out.

I blinked.

The divorce had barely been finalized when they got married.

I breathed.

The wedding had been beyond quick, everyone said so. The move south, even quicker.

I was Mary Iris Malone, and I was not okay.

“How pregnant are you?” I whispered.

Dad put his hand on my knee. The same hand that polished and repolished a never-used motorcycle. The same hand that put distance between a golf ball and its hole so I could win. The same hand that, as a small child, spanked and fed me, the ultimate personification of a villainous hero.

And wow, had my hero
fucked. up.

I met Dad's eyes for the first time in weeks, shocked at how sad they were. “You cheated on her?” I whispered.

He tried to say something but choked on the word.

I was crying, too, but the words came out just fine. “You cheated on Mom?”

“Mary,” he said, “this is—”

“Don't ever call me that again.”

I sat there frozen, wondering if this icy truth could ever melt, if the madness of the world could ever be cured.

In the back den, someone had left the TV on . . .

“. . . no way to know how many soldiers are missing or whether they're even alive. Sources close to the Pentagon are, as usual, keeping quiet. In these moments of uncertainty, one can only pray for their families and loved ones. Back to you, Brian.

“Thanks, Debbie. That's Debbie Franklin in Kabul. Once again, for those who are just tuning in, BREAKING NEWS from Afghanistan . . .”

I sunk into my mother's old couch and let my breaking news wash over me. Like some giant jigsaw puzzle, a thousand separate things took the shape of one whole thing, ugly and shameful.

“We're calling her Isabel,” said Kathy through tears.

“What?”

“Your sister. We're naming her after your aunt. We're calling her Isabel.”

Of course they are
, I thought. But I said nothing.

Dad pulled a small paper sack out of nowhere and set it on my lap. It had a big red ribbon tied haphazardly around the top.

“What the fuck is this?” I was intent on cursing as frequently and offensively as possible.

“It's a journal,” said Kathy. As if that explained everything. As if a journal was fair exchange for my dad cheating with, and impregnating, a replacement mother.

“What the fuck do I need a journal for?”

Kathy cleared her throat, looked at Dad.

“So you can write letters to your sister,” he whispered.

I looked down at the bag, but only to avoid eye contact.

“I read about it,” he continued, “and thought this might be something you'd like to try. This way, you can talk to her before she gets here. And, I don't know—it might help you process things. Or something.”

I unwrapped the ribbon, the paper, held the journal in my hands. It wasn't leather-bound or anything, and some of the corners were already beginning to fray.
He's apologizing
, I thought.
This is his apology.
But it was cheap in every way imaginable. A real apology cost something, because you had to stand there like an idiot and say it out loud for all the world to hear—
I'M SORRY.
And the world, as always, would respond with a resounding, “Yes. Yes, you are.” Dad wasn't going there; I wasn't sure he could. That kind of humility required a depth of love he had never been proven to possess.

“Of course, if you do plan on giving it to her one day, maybe you could avoid topics of, you know, tragic substance. Or at least despair.”

I looked up at him, wondering how it was possible I could be a product of this man's loins. “And how do you propose I do that, Dad, seeing as how our family is prone to substantial desperation?”

He rolled his eyes and flared his nostrils. “I was kidding, Mim. Trying to lighten the tension a little. Of course, write what you want. Tell little Iz all about the atrocities of life. I just hope you'll remember some of the good stuff, too.”

I looked at the journal and suddenly remembered that day long ago, reading a book at Aunt Isabel's feet. “I can round off the sharp edges of my brain,” I said.

Only it wasn't supposed to be out loud. Dad and Kathy looked at each other, their concern thick in the air. Suffocating, actually. Still holding the journal, I stood from the couch.

“Oh, wait,” said Kathy. “I got tacos.”

I looked at her, wondering what she'd actually said. Surely it wasn't
I got tacos
. Surely, even she could understand how
I got tacos
was not the thing to say at the foot of this colossal conversation. Surely . . .

“You what?”

She blinked. “From the Taco Hole. I thought we could have dinner and . . . talk.”

Nope, I was wrong. She didn't understand. She never would. I turned, walked from the room.

“Honey, where are you going?” asked Dad.

The real question wasn't
where
, but
when
and
how
. I knew the where, because I'd already looked it up.

Nine hundred forty-seven miles away,
I thought to myself
. Nine hundred forty-seven miles . . .

(947 Miles from Mosquitoland)

Best for Her

“FOR REAL THOUGH,
you have to show me how you did that.”

I will ignore her. For all of eternity, if possible.

“Your haircut, I mean,” says Kathy. “You really pull it off.”

From my bag, I grab the makeup remover and wipe the war paint from my face. Beck and Walt are following behind us in Uncle Phil. Their trip back to Ashland Inn had turned up nothing. Beck's phone was officially missing, most likely stolen by some disgruntled maid or maintenance worker. They'd arrived back at the house just as Kathy and I were exiting. I'd give a pinky toe to be with them instead, but leave it to Kathy to suck the fun out of a thing. Her one condition for allowing us to continue to Cleveland was that she would drive me the rest of the way.

“Still wearing those shoes,” she says. It's her last-ditch effort to get me to talk, and I have to say, a rather predictable move. I don't bite.

“You know—” she starts, then shakes her head. “Never mind.”

“I'm so sick of people doing that.” Honest to God, I had every intention of not speaking to her, but this is just too much.

“What?” she says.

“Starting a sentence, and then saying ‘never mind.' Like it's really possible for me to not sit here and try to figure out what you were
gonna
say, before you thought better of it.”

“Well, what I was
gonna
say was really not my place.”

“Ha! Right. Okay. Well, how about we go back in time so you can apply the same set of scrupulous principles to basically every decision you've made in the last six months.”

She takes a deep breath and rubs her belly, which seems to have grown considerably over the last five days. “You're mad. I get it.”

“Mad? Kathy, my life was fine before you. It wasn't perfect, but it was good. And then you came along and suddenly home wasn't home anymore, it was part-time, like a hostel or something. Dad wasn't Dad, he was Part-time Dad. Mom wasn't Mom, do you know what she was?
Gone
. Along with my life, both of which
you
took from me, leaving this I-don't-know-what . . . part-time shadow of myself in its place. Now you and my part-time dad are having a full-time kid. And you want me to be, what, part of the family? Thanks, I'll pass.”

Kathy takes the next exit, and navigates a back road. For a moment, we sit in silence, avoiding the uncomfortable nearness of one another. “Whether you like it or not, Mim, this family needs you. Now more than ever. Izzie's going to need a big sister. She's going to—”

“I read the letters, you know. The ones Mom sent you, asking for help.”

Kathy stops talking, which is half the battle. The other half is to shame the shit out of her.

“She's sick, right?” I say. “Is she dying?”

Silence.

I shake my head. “Whatever it is, she asked you for help. The least you could've done was put a damn TV in her room.”

“Do you still have them?” Kathy asks quietly. “The letters?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

Kathy glances sideways at me.
The look of guilt
.

“I'm not sure what you mean by that, Mim.”

“I mean three weeks ago, I stopped getting letters. Quite suddenly, actually. And wouldn't you know it, every time I get home from school the mailbox is empty.”

“What are you suggesting, that I'm . . .
hiding letters
from your mother? Mim, I would never do that.”

“Right, okay. Just like you would never suggest I should stop calling her. Or keep me from visiting her.”

Kathy is shaking her head now, a look of confusion on her face, and I have to give it to her, I hadn't expected such high-caliber acting. I pull out the sixth letter, the only survivor, and hold it up like an Olympic flame. “Look familiar? Here, let me refresh your memory.” I unfold the wrinkled paper, smooth it out in my lap, and clear my throat. “‘Think of whats best for her. Please reconsider.'”

My epiglottis is a hummingbird, my heart matching it beat for beat.

I suddenly remember Beck's
hmm
the first day I met him. He saw the envelope with my mother's PO Box address; then he saw this note and said “
Hmm.
”

Looking closer, the scrawl of this letter is so different from my mother's familiar handwriting . . . I recall the first line of the first letter, the core of my epistolary snowball.
In response to your last letter, the answer is no
. I stare at the letter in my hands, as if seeing it for the first time:
Think of whats best for her. Please reconsider.

“You wrote this,” I whisper. It comes out inadvertently, in a breath. Kathy is staring through the windshield, into the horizon, her mouth half-open. Her eyes are wet, and I don't care. I want to hurt her, to punch her, to reach across the car and stick my fingers in her eye sockets.

“We asked if you could visit,” says Kathy. “When Eve said no, I was so mad I couldn't even write straight.”

“But that doesn't make sense,” I say. Terrified as I am to complete this puzzle, I have to see it through. “Why would you still have a letter you wrote
to
someone?”

She's all out bawling now, rubbing her burgeoning stomach. “Oh, honey.”

And suddenly, I know the answer. “Say it, Kathy. Why would you have a note you sent to someone else?”

I need to hear it out loud. This thing won't be a thing until I hear it.

Kathy wipes her face and puts a hand on my leg. “We love you so much, dear. You have to believe that.”

“Fucking
say
it.”

She pulls her hand away, wipes old tears as new ones come. “She sent it back, Mim. Eve sent that letter back.”

All the air in my body escapes. At once, the crippling effects of my week's diet and sleeping habits hit me fully. I am, 100 percent, exhausted. I'm beat. No, I'm beaten.

“It doesn't matter,” I say, a lie. I lean my head against the cool-paned window. “It doesn't change anything.”

The interstate is long gone. We ride in silence through a winding labyrinth of back roads, staring idly at the tall Ohio corn. I focus on the only thing that might keep me from bashing my head against the dashboard: my friends. In the side mirror, I watch Beck's lips moving. Walt is focused on something in his lap. I can't even see his face, just his Cubs hat. He's probably working out his Rubik's Cube for the bazillionth time. God, I miss those two. It's bizarre when I think about it. A girl can go her entire life without missing a person, and then, three days later—boom—she can't imagine life without them.

“That's what I meant about friends, Iz.”

Kathy looks at me quizzically. “What?”

My cheeks flush. Shit. “Nothing,” I say, staring out the window.

But it's something, Iz. It's a huge something.