No Time for Goodbye
Contents
This is for my wife, Neetha
May
1983
When Cynthia woke up
, it was so quiet in the house she thought it must be Saturday.
If only.
If there’d ever been a day that she needed to be a Saturday, to be anything but a school day, this was it. Her stomach was still doing the occasional somersault, her head was full of cement, and it took some effort to keep it from falling forward or onto her shoulders.
Jesus, what the hell was that in the wastepaper basket next to the bed? She couldn’t even remember throwing up in the night, but if you were looking for evidence, there it was.
She had to deal with this first, before her parents came in. Cynthia got to her feet, wobbled a moment, grabbed the small plastic container with one hand and opened her bedroom door a crack with the other. There was no one in the hall, so she slipped past the open doors of her brother’s and parents’ bedrooms and into the bathroom, closing the door and locking it behind her.
She emptied the bucket into the toilet, rinsed it in the tub, took a bleary-eyed look at herself in the mirror. So, this is how a fourteen-year-old girl looks when she gets hammered. Not a pretty sight. She could barely remember what Vince had given her to try the night before, stuff he’d snuck out of his house. A couple of cans of Bud, some vodka, gin, an already opened bottle of red wine. She’d promised to bring some of her dad’s rum, but had chickened out in the end.
Something was niggling at her. Something about the bedrooms.
She splashed cold water on her face, dried off with a towel. Cynthia took a deep breath, tried to pull herself together, in case her mother was waiting for her on the other side of the door.
She wasn’t.
Cynthia headed back to her room, feeling the broadloom under her toes. Along the way, she glanced into her brother Todd’s room, then her parents’. The beds were made. Her mother didn’t usually get around to making them until later in the morning—Todd never made his own, and their mother let him get away with it—but here they were, looking as though they’d never been slept in.
Cynthia felt a wave of panic. Was she already late for school? Just how late was it?
She could see Todd’s clock on his bedside table from where she stood. Just ten before eight. Nearly half an hour before she usually left for her first class.
The house was still.
She could usually hear her parents down in the kitchen about this time. Even if they weren’t speaking to each other, which was often the case, there’d be the faint sounds of the fridge opening and closing, a spatula scraping against a frying pan, the muffled rattling of dishes in the sink. Someone, her father usually, leafing through the pages of the morning newspaper, grunting about something in the news that irritated him.
Weird.
She went into her room, the walls plastered with posters of KISS and other soul-destroying performers that gave her parents fits, and closed the door. Pull it together, she told herself. Show up for breakfast like nothing ever happened. Pretend there wasn’t a screaming match the night before. Act like her father hadn’t dragged her out of her much older boyfriend’s car and taken her home.
She glanced at her ninth-grade math text sitting atop her open notebook on her desk. She’d only managed half the questions before she’d gone out the night before, deluded herself into thinking that if she got up early enough she could finish them in the morning.
Yeah, that was gonna happen.
Todd was usually banging around this time of the morning. In and out of the bathroom, putting Led Zeppelin on his stereo, shouting downstairs to his mother asking where his pants were, burping, waiting until he was at Cynthia’s door to rip one off.
She couldn’t remember him saying anything about going in to school early, but why would he tell her anyway? They didn’t often walk together. She was a geeky ninth grader to him, although she was giving it her best shot to get into as much bad stuff as he was. Wait’ll she told him about getting really drunk for the first time. No, wait, he’d just rat her out later when he was in the doghouse himself and needed to score points.
Okay, so maybe Todd had to go to school early, but where were her mother and father?
Her dad, maybe he’d left on another business trip before the sun even came up. He was always heading off somewhere, you could never keep track. Too bad he hadn’t been away the night before.
And her mother, maybe she’d driven Todd to school or something.
She got dressed. Jeans, a sweater. Put on her makeup. Enough not to look like shit, but not too much that her mother started making cracks about her going to “tramp tryouts.”
When she got to the kitchen, she just stood there.
No cereal boxes out, no juice, no coffee in the coffeemaker. No plates out, no bread in the toaster, no mugs. No bowl with a trace of milk and soggy Rice Krispies in the sink. The kitchen looked exactly as it had after her mother had cleaned up from dinner the night before.
Cynthia glanced about for a note. Her mom was big about leaving notes when she had to go out. Even when she was angry. A long enough note to say, “On your own today,” or “Make yourself some eggs, have to drive Todd,” or just “Back later.” If she was really angry, instead of signing off with “Love, Mom,” she’d write “L, Mom.”
There was no note.
Cynthia worked up the nerve to shout, “Mom?” Her own voice suddenly sounded strange to her. Maybe because there was something in it she didn’t want to recognize.
When her mother didn’t answer, she called out again. “Dad?” Again, nothing.
This, she surmised, must be her punishment. She’d pissed off her parents, disappointed them, and now they were going to act like she didn’t exist. Silent treatment, on a nuclear scale.
Okay, she could deal with that. It beat a huge confrontation first thing in the morning.
Cynthia didn’t feel she could keep down any breakfast, so she grabbed the schoolbooks she needed and headed out the door.
The
Journal Courier,
rolled up with a rubber band like a log, lay on the front step.
Cynthia kicked it out of her way, not really thinking about it, and strode down the empty driveway—her father’s Dodge and mother’s Ford Escort were both gone—in the direction of Milford South High School. Maybe, if she could find her brother, she’d learn just what was going on, just how much trouble she might actually be in.
Plenty, she figured.
She’d missed curfew, an early one of eight o’clock. It was a school night, first of all, and then there’d been that call earlier in the evening from Mrs. Asphodel about how if she didn’t hand in her English assignments, she wasn’t going to pass. She told her parents she was going to Pam’s house to do homework, that Pam was going to help her get caught up on her English stuff, even though it was stupid and a total waste of time, and her parents said okay, but you still have to be home by eight. Come on, she said, she’d barely have time to get one assignment done, and did they want her to fail? Was that what they wanted?
Eight, her father said. No later. Well, screw that, she thought. She’d be home when she got home.
When Cynthia wasn’t home by eight-fifteen, her mother phoned Pam’s house, got Pam’s mother, said, “Hi, it’s Patricia Bigge? Cynthia’s mom? Could I talk to Cynthia, please?” And Pam’s mother said, “Huh?” Not only was Cynthia not there, but Pam wasn’t even home.
That was when Cynthia’s father grabbed the faded fedora hat he never went anywhere without, got in his Dodge, and started driving around the neighborhood, looking for her. He suspected she might be with that Vince Fleming boy, the seventeen-year-old from the eleventh grade, the one who had his license, who drove around in a rusted red 1970 Mustang. Clayton and Patricia Bigge didn’t much care for him. Tough kid, troubled family, bad influence. Cynthia had heard her parents talking one night, about Vince’s father, that he was some bad guy or something, but she figured it was just bullshit.
It was just a fluke that her dad spotted the car at the far end of the parking lot of the Connecticut Post Mall, out on the Post Road, not far from the theaters. The Mustang was backed up to the curb, and her father parked in front, blocking it in. She knew it was him instantly when she saw the fedora.
“Shit,” said Cynthia. Good thing he hadn’t shown up two minutes earlier, when they’d been making out, or when Vince was showing her his new switchblade—Jesus, you pressed this little button, and zap! Six inches of steel suddenly appeared—Vince holding it in his lap, moving it around and grinning, like maybe it was something else. Cynthia had tried holding it, had sliced the air in front of her and giggled.
“Easy,” Vince had said cautiously. “You can do a lot of damage with one of these.”
Clayton Bigge marched right over to the passenger door, yanked it open. It creaked on its rusty hinges.
“Hey, pal, watch it!” Vince said, no knife in hand now, but a beer bottle, almost as bad.
“Don’t ‘hey pal’ me,” her father said, taking her by the arm and ushering her back into his own car. “Christ almighty, you reek,” he told her.
She wished she could have died right then.
She wouldn’t look at him or say anything, not even when he started going on about how she was becoming nothing but trouble, that if she didn’t get her head screwed on right she’d be a fuckup her whole life, that he didn’t know what he’d done wrong, he just wanted her to grow up and be happy and blah blah blah, and Jesus even when he was pissed off he still drove like he was taking his driver’s test, never exceeding the speed limit, always using his turn signal, the guy was unbelievable.
When they pulled into the driveway, she was out of the car before he had it in park, throwing open the door, striding in, trying not to weave, her mother standing there, not looking mad so much as worried, saying, “Cynthia! Where were—”
She steamrolled past her, went up to her room. From downstairs, her father shouted, “You come down here! We got things to discuss!”
“I wish you were dead!” she screamed, and slammed her door.
That much came back to her as she walked to school. The rest of the evening was still a bit fuzzy.
She remembered sitting down on her bed, feeling woozy. Too tired to feel embarrassed. She decided to lie down, figuring she could sleep it off by the morning, a good ten hours away.
A lot could happen before morning.
At one point, drifting in and out of sleep, she thought she heard someone at her door. Like someone was hesitating just outside it.
Then, later, she thought she heard it again.
Did she get up to see who it was? Did she even try to get out of bed? She couldn’t remember.
And now she was almost to school.
The thing was, she felt remorseful. She’d broken nearly every household rule in a single night. Starting with the lie about going to Pam’s. Pam was her best friend, she was over to the house all the time, slept over every other weekend. Cynthia’s mother liked her, maybe even trusted her, Cynthia thought. Bringing Pam’s name into it, Cynthia thought somehow that would buy her some time, that Patricia Bigge wouldn’t be so quick to phone Pam’s mother. So much for that plan.
If only her crimes ended there. She’d broken curfew. Gone parking with a boy. A
seventeen-year-old
boy. A boy they say broke school windows the year before, took a joyride in a neighbor’s car.
Her parents, they weren’t all bad. Most of the time. Especially her mom. Her dad, shit, even he wasn’t too bad, when he was home.
Maybe Todd did get a lift to school. If he did have practice, and he was pressed for time, her mom might have given him one, then decided to go grocery shopping after. Or to the Howard Johnson’s for a coffee. She did that once in a while.
First-period History was a write-off. Second-period Math was even worse. She couldn’t focus, her head still hurt. “How did you do on those questions, Cynthia?” the math teacher asked. She didn’t even look at him.
Just before lunch, she saw Pam, who said, “Jesus, if you’re going to tell your mom you’re at my house, you wanna fucking let me know? Then maybe I could tell my mom
something
.”
“Sorry,” Cynthia said. “Did she have a fit?”
“When I came in,” Pam said.
At lunch, Cynthia slipped out of the cafeteria, went to the school pay phone, dialed home. She’d tell her mother she was sorry. Really, really sorry. And then she’d ask to come home, say she felt sick. Her mother would look after her. She couldn’t stay mad at her if she was sick. She’d make soup.
Cynthia gave up after fifteen rings, then thought maybe she’d dialed wrong. Tried again, no answer. She had no work number for her dad. He was on the road so much of the time, you had to wait for him to check in from wherever he was staying.
She was hanging out in front of the school with some friends when Vince Fleming drove by in his Mustang. “Sorry about all that shit last night,” he said. “Jeez, your dad’s a prize.”
“Yeah, well,” Cynthia said.
“So what happened after you went home?” Vince asked. There was something in the way he asked, like he already knew. Cynthia shrugged and shook her head, didn’t want to talk about it.
Vince asked, “Where’s your brother today?”
Cynthia said, “What?”
“He home sick?” Vince Fleming asked.
Nobody’d seen Todd at school. Vince said he was going to ask him, quiet like, how much trouble Cynthia was in, whether she was grounded, because he was hoping she wanted to get together Friday night or Saturday, his friend Kyle was getting him some beer, they could go up to that spot, the one on the hill, maybe sit in the car awhile, look at stars, right?
Cynthia ran home. Didn’t ask Vince for a ride, even though he was right there. Didn’t check in at the school office to tell them she was skipping off early. Ran the whole way, thinking, as she pumped her legs,
Please let her car be there, Please let her car be there
.
But when she rounded the corner from Pumpkin Delight Road to Hickory, and her two-story house came into view, the yellow Escort, her mother’s car, was not there. But she shouted out her mother’s name anyway when she got inside with what little breath she had left. Then her brother’s.