Split (5 page)

I push myself off the wall, shove through the clothes and out of the closet. The pink shag brushes my feet as I walk to the living room.

The apartment suddenly seems cramped. There’s nowhere to move. I try walking a loop from the couch to the desk to the kitchen and back again, but they are only about six steps apart.

In Chicago, I knew everything. I could look at the sky and know how warmly to dress; I knew where every street led, and where every fight would end. I could look at my father and know when to keep my mouth shut, when to piss him off so I could take the hits for my mother, and when only his wife–punching bag would do. I understood when a fight was coming, how fast it was going, where it was going, everything. Fights have a rhythm; they do. I swear it. And they don’t end up like that. Not where I’m from.

What am I doing here? I can’t even breathe right in this too-thin air.

Should I drive nineteen hours straight back and apologize until he opens the door?

My brain jumps to the night I left. My father said,
If you come back, I’ll kill her
.

I look at the phone on Christian’s desk.
Can’t go back, can’t go back
. But I can talk to my mom. I can hear something I know, something I recognize. He never said I couldn’t call, and it’s not like he’s looking for me.

I pick up the phone, turn it on, and dial my home number. Out the window, I stare at a swimming pool in the courtyard. I haven’t seen or heard anybody use it, even though it’s Sunday. Maybe it’s because of the green patches of growth on the bottom.

Ring. Ring. Ring
.

Maybe she’s not home. I glance at my watch. 2:08 here, 3:08 in Chicago on a Sunday. Where is she?

Ring
, says the phone.

Thu-dump
, says my blood.

Do I leave a message?

Ring
.

It’s not like my father would call me back and invite me home.

What could I say on the machine? “When, when, when?” That would do the trick if I wanted him to break her arm. Or worse.

Ring. Click
. “You’ve reached Judge Witherspoon and his family. Leave a message so one of us can get back to you,” comes my father’s mechanized voice.

I hang up as I hear the beep.

I go to Christian’s computer and wiggle the mouse. Before his homepage is even open, my fingers go on autopilot, calling up my e-mail. Where the hell is my mom?

New Mail! it tells me. I click on it and find four e-mails. Two are junk. The other two: one from Edward, RE: Monday after school by the fields. The other from Lauren, RE: Shithead.

Nice.

Should I open Lauren’s and reply? I hesitate. That blister is still too sore. I don’t want to read it, don’t want to think about our fights, making up. None of it.

Maybe I don’t have to. Look at how Christian did it. He never looked back. That’s what I need to do. Forget about Lauren, forget about Starbucks, forget the whole thing. If you leave a blister alone, it disappears eventually; its fluid gets reabsorbed, and no mark is left. I’m here now. That’s all that matters. Yes, a new life. Out with the old. I trash both the e-mails, hit Compose, and start writing to my mom.

I made it here okay. He looks good, different, older. Come see? When? Can’t keep tabs on you from here. Reply ASAP or I’ll drive back and get you. JW

I read it over and over again. I hadn’t known I was going to write that I’d get her. I wonder if Christian would come with me. We’re older now. We could protect her together. We could get her out.

I don’t send the e-mail. How can I drive back if I don’t have any money for gas? How do I know what Christian wants? Hell, I don’t even know if he wants me here.

I lean back in his office chair and realize that it swivels. I press my toes into the carpet and push off. Three-quarters of the way around. Push and whirl. The screen saver appears, and I watch a line zooming around in unpredictable patterns.

Why didn’t I drag her into the car? Why didn’t I grab her wrist and yank her through the damn window? Why didn’t she get in on her own? She could have.

I push and whirl, thinking about that. I spin and spin until my stomach rises, and I flush hot. Too dizzy. I push away from the computer and put my head in my hands until the floor stops spinning.

I thought she stayed because we had nowhere to go, but the night I left I was sitting in my car, my speedometer’s needle pointing to zero. While I was wondering who would take me in, she came out and handed me an envelope. Christian’s address.

In the missing letter, had he begged her to come? Had he told her she couldn’t, that he wouldn’t help her? No, when I arrived, he looked down the hall for her. Has he been waiting for her, year after year?

I look at my e-mail again.

When?

If I send it, she might refuse to come. She might admit that she’ll never leave him. I delete my threat to come get her, replace it with:

I need to hear from you ASAP, or I’ll send the police over to the house, report you missing, whatever it takes.

That ought to do it.

chapter 6

i
’m practicing
why-Christian-should-let-me-stay arguments. The “I’m so desperate” plea seems less than persuasive. I’m going to have to rely on familial affection. There’s got to be some of that, right? Christian taught me how to ride my bike when I was four, how to read when I was six, how to throw a punch when I was seven. It can’t just vanish. It hasn’t for me. I’m still hoping for that reception where he’s as happy to see me as I was to see him.

When Christian walks in, he looks me over and chuckles. I remember my too-big clothes and say, “I had to borrow some clothes, okay?”

“I can see that,” he says, and tosses a brown paper bag at me.

It has a bagel with cream cheese, that is marred by long green stringy things.

“So finish eating, and we’ll go shopping.”

I take a breath and then fess up straight and fast. “I don’t have any money.”

“Right.”

His eyes glaze over while his brain goes into problem-solving mode. I bite into the bagel and wish I could extract the spinach from the cream cheese while I watch him thinking. He inhales sharply. Ding! Solution found.

He walks to his desk and takes out a green American Express card from a drawer. He peels the sticker off the back of the card, gets a pen, and signs his name on the white strip. He doesn’t hesitate. Christian Marshall.

Jace Marshall. That’s going to be weird. Whether I stay or not, I’m now Jace Marshall. Leave all that Witherspoon crap behind.

“Well, clothes first, job next, okay?”

“Sure, okay,” I say, but I don’t move, not even as he gets his jacket and his keys.

Listen
, I want to say,
I’ve just been killing myself in this desert, sweating out every drop of liquid in my body, trying not to think about this conversation. Can we just get it over with?
But I can’t demand more. That’s the problem of living off charity. Or rather, driving the charitable into debt.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

He snaps the card down on the coffee table, sits on the couch, and lifts an eyebrow.

“I just want to know if I’m staying here,” I say. “You know, so I know what to buy.”

“You can stay if you’d like—”

“If I’d like?”

“As long as we can agree to some ground rules. If they don’t sound good, we’ll plan out your next move, okay?” Christian says, his voice calm.

I sit down on the two-person couch and face him. Stand for court, sit for negotiations.

“Rule One: You don’t ask me questions, and I won’t ask you, either.”

“Sure, okay,” I say.

He looks at me for a moment, chin tilting, eyes narrowing. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“’Cause whenever you say, ‘Sure, okay,’ I’m not so sure.”

What would you like me to say? Give me a script
. “Well, no problem, then.”

“Rule Two: You can’t call Mom from my phone. I mean, from this phone.”

I swallow, remember our caller ID at home, and consider confessing. I seriously doubt that would help my case.

“He’s not looking for you anymore,” I say. “He gave up a long time ago.”

“Or maybe he just lost track of me. When the statute of limitations expired from the last time he hit me, he tracked me down in New York. That was when I changed my last name and studied in Spain for a semester.”

“What happened when he found you in New York?” I ask Christian.

His jaw muscle jumps. “Rule Number One violation.”

I suddenly get how my very presence threatens all he has done to escape, staying with the Costacoses, living family-less in New York, crossing the Atlantic and back. And how that has made him shut down any familial affection, how he probably had to freeze it out just to get by. The familial loyalty argument dries up in my mouth.

“Well, he won’t be looking for me,” I say.

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

“No, he won’t. It’s not like you. I mean,
you
left
him
. That’s not going to go over well, right? But he wanted me to go.”

He goes still, and I can hear the question he won’t ask: What did you do? But according to Rule Number One, he can’t ask, and I’m not volunteering. If I told him that I hit my father, and hit him first, would Christian clap me on the shoulder or consider me too violent, too much of a risk, and kick me out?

He sits back and closes his eyes, and now I understand why he was so cold. He thought Dad was right behind me, and after five years of running, I had screwed that all up for him.

“Well,” he says, “if you’re right, that’s huge. But I still don’t want him to know where I am. So no phone calls to Mom. And don’t give her the phone number.”

“What if she needs to call?”

I feel like he’s handing me a shovel—dig that grave. Her tombstone will read:

H
ERE LIES
J
ENNIFER
W
ITHERSPOON
B
ATTERED
W
IFE AND
A
BANDONED
M
OTHER

“Go,”
she said, without touching my hand.
“And I’ll come to you.”

I look into Christian’s blue eyes. He’s leaning forward, his hands together, watching me. This is a deal-breaker.

“Sure, okay.”
The shovel cuts into the earth, the first gap for her grave, and I pitch the dirt aside. Swoosh
.

“Most of the money I send to Mom—” Christian starts.

“Whoa, whoa. You send her money?”

“At least stick by the rules for the length of this conversation.”

“Sorry,” I say.

“I send it to her so she can leave him …”

I stop listening. She had access to his address, to his money, and she stayed there? I don’t get it. Why didn’t she just get in the car with me?

“What?” I say, tuning back in.

“I send her cash so Dad can’t track it from the account. I send it from a post office box without my address. And I use a phony name for her, so it will look like it’s just the wrong address. Anyway, if you have to write to her, we can make that work.”

“You send her cash?”

Christian nods.

I swallow, wondering if she emptied her stash for me or just gave me a month’s worth. “Wait a minute. How did she get … She gave me a letter with your address on it.”

“The one you slipped under the door? Yeah, I risked sending her one letter. I put in some phony letter, but used our code name, which, by the way, is Henry Higgins.” He gets a private smile on his face, and I’m sure that that name is some joke that I’m not in on.

“I wanted her to have my address when I moved, so she would know where to come if she leaves him.”

“E-mail?”

“Jace, come on.”

I pick up the Amex card and press my finger hard against the edges.

“No e-mail.” My stomach is hollowing out. “Except …”

He raises his eyebrows and stares at me. It isn’t a bad way to test the water, to see if I can tell him about the phone call.

“Except that I … already did.”

“Jace! Damn it.”

I push the credit card as hard as I can into my finger and watch my skin whiten as it cuts off the blood flow.

He takes a deep breath. “I’m going to need you to start thinking before you act, okay? I’m not ready to raise a teenager. I can’t be a better version of a father to you.”

“I don’t need a father.”
I need you
.

But that won’t matter one bit if I tell him I called. That has never mattered. He’ll be just as fast—faster even—than my dad to throw me out on my ass. Why did I ever think any differently?

“He’ll help you,”
my mom promised.

Yeah, right.

My fingers curl into a fist. I start to picture myself throttling Christian.
My hand will wrap around his throat; I can feel his skin bulging between my fingers. I’m going to hit him
. Control slips from me. My fist flies, but I choose the table rather than Christian’s face. He jumps.

“Shit,” Christian says. He runs a hand through his hair once and then twice. “I’m sorry. You didn’t know that you couldn’t contact her.”

“For Christ’s sake, don’t apologize to me. I should apologize to your table.” I bite hard, crushing my teeth together.

Why are people always doing that? Apologizing when I lose my temper.

“My table will survive.” He pauses. “You have to not do that, okay? It’s too weird. You looked just like Dad.”

Now it’s like he punched me. I have no air. Can’t even talk for a second. I place the credit card down with great care on the table. Inhale slowly. Exhale slowly.

Finally, I spit out, “Just tell me. What am I supposed to do?”

“Yeah, all right. E-mail is probably okay.”

“He doesn’t know she has an account,” I say. “When I got one through school, I gave it to her, let her use the address as if it were hers.”

“Good, then you won’t need to call.”

Do I tell him?
Is that going to be my mantra if I live here?
Do I tell him? Do I tell him?
So far, I haven’t mentioned that Mom is on her way; I haven’t told him about the night I left, about Starbucks, and now this.

I decide not to worry about the phone call. I’ll bet it would come up as a private number anyway, given how paranoid he is.

The rest of the rules are easy: don’t do anything to get social services involved; stay in school. And then he says that from years of roommates, he has learned that roommates must contribute in at least two of three ways: emotional support, financial support, and keeping house.

I’m thinking,
No problem, I can clean, learn to cook. That ought to cover me
, when he says, “So you can help out around the house, and we’ll find you a job.”

And the door, the physical wooden door that I wedged my way through last night, sure, he opened that for me. But everything else is closed.

He puts his hand out. “Agreed?”

“Sure, okay,” I say.

He looks at me hard.

“I mean,” I say, “no problem.”

I shake his hand. I should be grateful that I have a place to stay. Instead, I feel like I’ve lost my brother all over again.