The Sitter (3 page)

4

T
eresa explained to me that the bus that travels from Manhattan to the Hamptons is called the Hampton Jitney. It makes several stops up and down the east side of the city. Then it makes its way across Long Island to the Hamptons. For a bus, it’s very luxurious and comfortable, and they give everyone water and a snack. Real first class.

“This is the world-famous Long Island Expressway,” Teresa announced, pointing out the window. “It’s not bad today because there’s no beach traffic—but wait till summer!”

I gazed out the window. I’d never been to Long Island before. We were at exit 38, and it looked pretty suburban. Trees lined the highway. Beyond them, I could see stores and small redbrick row houses.

The two women in the seat in front of us were talking loudly about a Botox party they’d attended. A man in a pin-striped suit sat in the seat across from us, tapping away on his laptop computer and muttering to himself.

I squeezed Teresa’s hand. “Thanks for coming with me,” I said. “You’ve been so nice to me. You’re always helping me.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess that’s my thing. I had four younger brothers. You know, a big Italian family. I took care of them all. They called me Mommy Number Two. Really.”

I laughed. “Well, thanks, Mommy Number Two.”

Teresa raised her knees to the back of the seat in front of her. “Well, I rented a car in Southampton. So while you’re having your job interview, I’m going to check out the share house. Then I’ll come back and pick you up.”

The woman in front of us said, “The Botox needle slipped, and now she can’t open her eyes and she can’t move her mouth.”

“Omigod,” her friend exclaimed. “That is so ironic.”

“Are you nervous?” Teresa asked. “About the job interview?”

I shrugged. “Not really. It sounds like a done deal.”

Teresa coiled a thick strand of hair around her hand. “A sales job in one of those trendy boutiques could be fun. Bet you’ll meet some interesting people.”

“Probably,” I said, keeping my eyes out the window. “I need a real job. Something steady with regular hours, you know.” I turned to Teresa. “I need some kind of success. I mean, I really have to show myself something. I mean . . . well . . . I don’t really know what I mean.”

I sighed. Teresa was studying me.

“I’ve kinda wasted the past few years,” I said.

She waited for me to explain. But I didn’t. “Let’s talk about you,” I said. “Did you really live your whole life in Brooklyn?”

She told me about growing up in a crowded apartment in the Bensonhurst area of Brooklyn with her parents and her four younger brothers. The rest of her big, noisy Italian family—cousins, grandparents, aunts, and uncles—all lived within a few blocks of each other. “Every dinner was a festival,” Teresa said. “I don’t think my mother ever stopped stirring the big pot of tomato sauce on the stove!”

Growing up in such a crowd was fun for her, but it was hard to get noticed, hard to find her own identity. When Teresa announced that she planned to move across the river to Manhattan, her family reacted with shock. How could she even dream of leaving home before she was married?

“It probably seems like no big deal to someone from Wisconsin,” Teresa said. “But crossing the East River was the hardest move of my life. My family is just so old-fashioned. I’m the first one to make the move. And here I am, working for a famous brokerage house on Park Avenue, living on the Upper West Side.”

“That’s so great,” I said. “Such a nice story.”

I thought of my mother—pretending she wanted me to stay, but so eager for me to leave Wisconsin, to leave home, to make a new start somewhere and take my sadness with me.

“And I’m not going to stay a secretary forever,” Teresa said. “I’m saving my money. I’m going to get an MBA at Columbia. After that . . . well . . . we’ll see.”

The bus had turned off the expressway. We were on a narrower road now, rolling past wide, grassy fields interrupted by thick stands of pine trees.

Teresa took a long drink from her bottle of water. “I’ve been doing all the talking,” she said. “Now it’s your turn, Ellie.”

I took a deep breath. “Well—”

My cell phone rang. I pulled it out of my bag and squinted at the caller ID. “Oh, no. It’s Clay.”

Teresa reached for my phone. “Don’t answer it.”

Too late. I’d already pushed the button. “Hi, Clay,” I said, moaning the words. “What do you want?”

“Hi, babe. I just wondered when you’re coming back.”

“Huh?”

“When you’re coming back to the city. I thought—”

“Clay, you know I don’t want to see you. You know I’m not going to change my mind.”

One of the Botox women turned around to stare at me. I guess I was talking pretty loudly. I sank back in the seat and lowered my voice. “Good-bye, Clay. I mean it. Good-bye.”

I clicked off the phone. I glared at it for a moment as if it were to blame. My heart was pounding. I shoved the phone back into my bag.

“You should change your cell-phone number,” Teresa said. “Maybe he’d take the hint.”

“He doesn’t take hints,” I said bitterly. “He’d still find me.”

“But it would make it harder for him,” she said. She tossed back her hair. “Forget about Clay. Let’s talk about all the new guys we’re going to meet this summer.”

She crossed her fingers. “I just know this is the summer I meet a really great guy. Someone I can really care about.” She sighed. “I’m going to be twenty-six, Ellie. I’m really ready. Ready to meet the right guy. Maybe even settle down.”

“Well, good luck,” I said. “Maybe—”

“Maybe you’ll meet someone, too. Then you really can forget about Clay.”

“I wish. But how can I forget about him?” I asked, my throat tightening. I felt myself getting angry. “What makes you think he’ll stay away? What makes you think he’ll ever give up? I’m sick of him. Sick of all his bullshit and self-pity. He’s out of control. He—”

“Ellie, please. We can deal with this.”

“I feel like he’s a hunter,” I said. “He’s a hunter and I’m the deer he’s stalking. I feel like—”

The bus jolted hard.

Startled shouts all around. The squeal of tires.

Teresa and I flew hard into the seat in front of us. My shoulder hit, and pain shot up my arm. Across the aisle, I saw the man’s laptop go sailing to the floor.

The bus windshield went dark. A heavy blackness, as if night had fallen.

A hard thud, and the bus bounced again.

“We hit someone!” a man shrieked.

And then I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t stop it. I opened my mouth and let out a shrill scream of horror.

A scream from deep inside me. Not from today. A scream from years ago . . . A scream I’d been holding in for seven years.

5

I
realized Teresa had hold of my shoulders. She tried to shake me. “Ellie, please. Stop! Stop screaming! Please stop. Ellie—!”

“It’s only a deer!” I heard someone shout.

“Only a deer,” Teresa repeated, holding on to me, her face close to mine, her green eyes wide with surprise, with confusion. “Only a deer. Please stop!”

Am I still screaming?

“Ellie, stop! Stop! It was only a deer.”

The scream faded in my mouth. My throat ached. Something much deeper inside throbbed and hurt. Yes, the pain was still there.

I knew people were looking at me. I pretended I didn’t see them. I turned back to Teresa. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

Teresa loosened her hold on my shoulders.

“I’m the frightened deer,” I whispered, my throat raw and dry. “I was just saying it . . . how I’m like a deer. And now the deer is dead. Dead in the road. Oh, Teresa, this is such bad luck. Don’t you see? It’s really bad luck.”

“Ellie, take a deep breath,” Teresa said. “It’s no such thing. The bus hit a deer, that’s all. It’s not like it’s some kind of omen. You don’t believe in that kind of stuff, do you?”

I took a deep breath and held it. I heard police sirens outside the window. The driver had climbed out of the bus. Some people were hurrying out to look at the dead deer.

I could see it. It had been thrown into tall grass beside the bus. It was just a fawn. It lay on its side. Its neck had snapped. White shoulder bones poked through the fur. The round black eyes were frozen wide in fright. And blood . . . I saw an ocean of blood.

Teresa held on to my hand. “Why did you scream like that? Ellie, it’s like you were in a total panic. I couldn’t get you to stop.”

“I’m sorry. . . .”

How could I begin to describe it all? What should I tell her? Teresa was my friend, a good new friend. But how could I begin to tell her?

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “I was in a horrible crash. In high school. Ever since then, I—well . . . It was just so awful.”

She let go of my hand. “Oh, my God. A car crash? How bad? What happened?”

“Yes, bad,” I whispered, staring down at the floor. “It was a really bad crash. We went over an embankment. I—I was killed.”

A long silence. Teresa stared hard at me, her face twisted with confusion. The bus had emptied. We were the only ones still in our seats.

“Killed?” Teresa finally choked out. “You?”

I swallowed. “Huh? Me? No. Oh . . . wow. Did I say that?”

Why did I say that? Why did I say that I was killed? What kind of a slip was that? Did I really wish that I had been killed alongside Will?

No.

Of course not.

“Someone else was killed, Teresa,” I said, steadying my voice, finally starting to breathe normally. “A guy. I mean, my boyfriend. His name was Will. My high school boyfriend. What a weird slip. I guess seeing the dead deer—”

“You know, there are a million deer in the Hamptons,” Teresa said softly. “They’re everywhere. And they’re always getting hit by cars.”

“Yes?” I didn’t quite get her point.

“You were talking about feeling like a frightened deer. And then the bus hit a deer. But what I’m saying is, it happens all the time. It was not an omen, Ellie. It was just a coincidence.”

I gazed out the window. The sun faded behind a cloud. Darkness rolled over the bus. “Yeah,” I whispered. “Of course. Just a coincidence . . .”

6

W
ill’s house was always neat and spotless. The floors sparkled. You could see your reflection. Everything clean and dusted and in its place.

I felt so intimidated whenever I stepped into his house. I always took my Doc Martens off at the door and walked in stocking feet. I knew Mrs. Davis, Will’s mother, didn’t approve of me. For one thing, I had crazy, purple-streaked hair, and I just let it flow wild and unbrushed behind my shoulders. And I dressed in baggy, loose-fitting outfits like everyone else at Menota North High.

Maybe it was just me. But I always felt that Will’s mom was staring at me, watching what I touched, waiting for me to leave so she could wipe my fingerprints off the furniture.

I’m not making this up. I once saw her eat a Popsicle with a fork and knife. Who the hell does that?

It was a February afternoon. The temperature about two hundred below in Madison, not counting the windchill and the stiff gusts off the lake. Snow blowing and shifting in the wind, drifts to my knees.

Will led me to his house after school. I had a hooded sweatshirt under my parka and two sweaters under that, and I was still shivering, too frozen to speak.

He gives me a quick, frozen-lipped kiss. He thinks it’s funny. Two polar bears bumping noses.

And then we’re inside his house, shoving the kitchen door closed behind us. My boots are dripping on the glowing kitchen linoleum—tough break, Mrs. Davis!—and I toss my wet parka down and start rubbing my arms, furiously rubbing the cold away.

Will puts on the kettle for instant coffee.

His mother is at work, and his sister is in an after-school program. So Will and I have the house to ourselves for a few hours in the afternoons.

We sometimes hurry up to his bathroom on the second floor where we open the window, no matter how cold it is outside. And we smoke pot. Yes, Mrs. Davis, the world is not a neat place. You cannot keep control of everything—not even your family—by keeping everything neat and clean.

It just doesn’t work that way.

Will keeps the pot in the back of his sock drawer, and his mother has never found it. He buys it from a friend of his cousin’s at the junior college. We smoke a joint, or maybe two, quickly, passing it back and forth, our heads at the bathroom window, the wind fluttering our hair.

What if she came home while we were smoking it? Or what if she smelled it?

Giggling, kissing, blinking to focus our eyes, we spray a lot of room freshener afterwards and leave the window open until the odor is gone.

You need something after school, you know. And instant coffee just doesn’t do it.

But today we don’t hurry upstairs. We wait in the perfect kitchen with its glowing stove and refrigerator, the brass sun clock over the sink, the gleaming knives in perfect order in the rack above the counter, the hand-painted tiles of chickens and ducks on the wall above the stove. We wait for the kettle to whistle. Will goes to the stack of mail on the kitchen counter.

I study him while he flips through the magazines and catalogs. I find myself looking at him a lot. Somehow, even though it’s been three months, I can’t believe we’re going together.

I mean, he was going with another girl—for a long time, I think—and he left her for me.

All through high school, I hung out with a lot of guys. I was in the popular crowd; I don’t really know why. But you just find yourself in a group in high school, and there you are. That’s your place for the next four years.

But I was never really serious about any guy, except for Will. And I had to be serious about him, right, because he left someone for me.

It felt kinda grown-up. And totally flattering. And I knew kids at school talked about us all the time.

And so I find myself looking at Will a lot. He has a real Wisconsin face. His family has been here since the fur trappers, I guess. His face is round with a broad forehead. Not a baby face, and not really a high school face. An open, likable face. His blue eyes crinkle up when he smiles, and he even has a single dimple high on his right cheek.

He has thick, white-blond hair, which comes down over his collar. Of course, his mother complains that it’s too long and messy. I know he spends a lot of time on his hair, brushing it this way and that over the part on the left, making it look as if it hasn’t been brushed. He’d be embarrassed if anyone else knew he fussed over himself like that.

Will was one of the first guys at Menota High to have his ear pierced. He has a tiny, silver ring in his ear. He took a lot of teasing at first, and some of the teachers were appalled, and then all the guys started doing it.

And now I watch him sifting through the mail, and I’m pouring the boiling water into our cups, the steam rising, warm against my still-frozen face. And I’m starting to feel a little better. “Think your car will start?” I ask.

He raises his blue eyes from the mail. “My car? Why?”

“Maybe we could go see
Clueless
tonight.”

He frowned at me. “
Clueless
? It’s like a dumb California teen movie, right?”

“Cindy says it’s awesome. She says it’s not dumb. Some other kids told me it was good, too. I thought maybe . . .”

I could see he wasn’t listening to me. He was staring at a gray envelope in his hand.

“I don’t believe this,” he whispered.

He tore open the envelope. Unfolded the letter inside. His eyes narrowed as he read it. He tore at his hair, making it stand high on his head. Then he let out an excited cry.

“Will? What is it?”

“I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it!” He started jumping up and down, holding the letter above his head.

“Will—?”

He leaped over to me, threw his arms around me, hugged me hard. His face was red with excitement. When he hugged me, I could feel his pounding heart through his sweatshirt.

I never forgot that moment.

The heart pounding against my chest. Feeling another person’s heart. Will’s heart.

Such a fragile thing.

Could I ever forget what that felt like?

Especially after he died. That tiny heartbeat. It was like something he left for me.

“I got it,” he said, letting go and waving the letter in my face. “I got it, Ellie. Early admission to Princeton!”

“Wow!” I let out a scream. I grabbed his head and kissed him. “Wow!”

And immediately, I was thinking—I’m staying here in Madison, starting at the university, and he’ll be off at Princeton. That’s in New Jersey, right? A long way from here.

How do I feel about that?

Will must have read my face. Because he came over and put his arms around me—strong, athletic arms because he was a basketball forward and he likes to work out—comforting me.

“We’ll see each other a lot,” he said. “No problem, right? We can visit each other at school. And there are a lot of breaks. You know. Winter break, spring break.”

“Yeah, sure,” I muttered. I liked having him hold me like that, and I liked the way he reassured me. But I kept thinking . . . thinking . . . thinking. . . . You can’t stop your mind. It just keeps going.

How do I feel about that?

“I’ll come home for every holiday,” Will said. “It won’t be bad. We’ll see each other a lot, Ellie. And we won’t go out with anyone else.”

Whoa.

How do I feel about
that
?

Will and I had been together only for three or four months. Was I really willing to make that commitment?

Yes, I cared about him. Sure, I did. I liked the strong, sure way he walked. And his smile. The way he tossed his head sometimes and trotted like Mrs. Havers’s greyhound down the block. And the way he held me as if he owned me. And the way his hair felt so soft and babylike between my fingers.

“Four years is nothing,” he said. He pressed his lips close to my ear. “Then we’ll be together forever, Ellie.”

We will?

Forever?

We’re up in his room now. He closed the door. He’s holding me, kissing me. He wants to make love. He wants to seal the bargain.

He keeps some condoms in his sock drawer, under the Ziploc bag of pot.

Yes, we’ve made love a couple times before. But this is different, he says. This is special. This is a pledge. A pledge of our love.

He’s so happy. He’s so excited.

Shouldn’t I be happy, too?

Shouldn’t I be overcome with emotion right now? Instead, I’m thinking, what if his mother comes home early? What if his sister comes home? Shouldn’t we pull the shades?

What if I meet another guy I like?

That’s what I’m thinking when I should be thinking of Will.

I’m pulling off my jeans, and I should be thinking of Will.

I’m pulling down my tights and not bothering with my two sweaters.

No time. He’s in a hurry to celebrate. To seal our bargain.

I’m climbing into his single bed under the Michael Jordan Bulls poster, and I should be thinking of Will.

So happy. Early admission. But we’ll stay together.

Yes. Together forever.

Why am I so surprised?

Why can’t I feel more? Shouldn’t I feel more right now?

And then we’re making love.

I’m letting him.

I’m
letting
him.

He swings me on top with those powerful arms, and I’m moving over him, and we’re both moaning in a steady rhythm, eyes shut.

I’m moving . . . moaning . . . moving on top of him . . . so wet . . . not neat . . .

And I shouldn’t be thinking at all.

But I’m glancing back at the bedroom door. And I’m thinking about dinner. I was supposed to get home early and help out. And I’m thinking about Lucky. Did I remember to buy cat food? And about a boy named Gary who offered to help me with my Politics paper . . .

Oh . . . oh . . . oh, yes . . .

I’m moaning and I’m feeling guilty. And I don’t think we’ll stay together when we’re apart.

Oh . . . oh, yes . . .

I feel so bad about it. Because I care about him. He’s holding my head, holding me so firmly, as if he’s captured me.

Will?

Will? Where are you?

If only I had held on, too. . . .