We Were Never Here (11 page)

Collette slipped out the door, and then Connor went to stand at the side of my bed. His hands rested on its bars, which were up now, a prison cell. He rocked back and forth, toe to heel, heel to toe.

“God,” he said. “Can you believe we got you out?”

Really? I thought. This is the takeaway? But what I said was, “I can't.” I looked out the window. I was starting to feel the embarrassment of the day move through my body. Shame. My crippling kryptonite.

He moved to the other side of the bed and crouched down. And then he unzipped his backpack and gingerly removed something from inside.

It was a Tupperware container filled with liquid.

“This is only going to get us in more trouble,” he said, standing. I heard his knees creak and crack. “But I brought you something. I had it for you earlier.”

What was it? I craned my neck to look closer. WHAT HAS CONNOR BROUGHT ME! WHAT IS IT? WHAT IS IT? I thought. And then I saw it. The little, well, legs I guess, frantically doggy-paddling the water. A tiny head strained from beneath a hard green shell.

“A turtle!” I gasped. It was so teeny I could have fit it like a quarter in the center of my palm.

“Shhh.” Connor put a chewed-up finger to his lips. “I got her to keep you company,” he said. “But obviously they're not allowed in here.”

Was he crazy? Not even Nora so blatantly broke rules. Or maybe he was just lovely.

I sat up a little and looked into the container, squinting at the turtle. It was so green, and it looked like it was outlined in gold. With a little snake face, its contoured eyes made it look as if it were wearing a mask, it looked so determined to swim. I stared at it through the cloudy plastic.

“No, you have to leave it!” I said.

“I think it's a she,” Connor said. “And you need to keep the container open. She won't last long in there, but you'll be out in a few days, and then you can get a tank for her at home.”

I slid the top off and looked in at the turtle. The shell had these striations of gold and a tile-like pattern, like the wallpaper of those French kings we read about when studying the French Revolution. “Thank you.” I looked up at Connor. I thought of all he had done for me that day. Or tried to do. I mentally scanned the room for a place to hide the turtle.

“She's just hatched,” Connor said. “I was getting Verlaine
some pig ears at the pet store and I saw a bunch of these. They reminded me of you.”

I didn't know what to think of the fact that I reminded Connor of a reptile. “It could be a he, though.” Why do we always refer to animals as he? Unless it's like a lioness or a mallard, it's usually a he.

“I wonder what's beneath her shell. I wonder who she'll grow into. Like I said, she's just hatched.”

I could see the turtle's itty-bitty nails. I imagined peeling back the shell and seeing what was beneath. I'm still not sure how you tell if a turtle is a boy or a girl.

“I'm going to call her Frog.” Can you dissect what's under a turtle's shell? I remember thinking this.

Connor shrugged. “Sounds good to me,” he said. He didn't ask why. “She's yours. To keep you company.”

“Thanks, Connor.” I wondered then if he liked when I said his name after a sentence as much as I did when he said mine. “I love her,” I said.

He took the Tupperware and sort of set the blue top over it and then he opened the drawer by my bed. He carefully placed Frog inside it. “I'll leave her there,” he said. “Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

I heard my mother greeting the nurses. “What?” she said. “Did something happen?”

I braced myself, but nothing happened.

“Everything's fine!” I heard one of them say.

That said, I knew my mother could just open the drawer and find Frog there. But I didn't want to let her go.

“Hi!” my mother said, opening the door.

“One minute, Mom!” I said. Did no one knock?
Ever?
Suddenly I felt breathless. Connor was leaving. And tomorrow morning I would get wheeled away and into the operating room. Dr. Orlitz would be ready and waiting. I imagined a butcher knife in his fat hands; it would be a horror movie I would never be able to watch, not even the preview.

My mom disappeared, but I could hear her waiting. You can hear my mother smiling and you can also hear her waiting.

“I guess I have to go,” Connor said. But he still stood there. “Hey, can I get your number?”

I had to laugh. I gave him my number, and Connor punched it into his phone.

“I'm calling you now,” he said.

“No phone.” There had been a brief moment today in the car with Connor when I'd remembered and, if I'd had it on me, heavy in my hand or my pocket, I could have finally used it, but mostly I loved the emptiness. The way no one could contact me.

“Well somewhere, wherever it is, it is getting my call,” Connor said.

“Hello?” he said. “Lizzie.”

I looked at him talking to a me that wasn't there.

“Voice mail,” he mouthed, pointing at the phone.

“Well, this is Connor,” he said. “The guy from the hospital? The guy with the cute dog? Call me sometime.” He clicked off his phone and grinned at me.

It felt amazing on this side, this other side of love, and then I felt that horrible aloneness again, like I was in some big, dark
void. Is that what it's like for everyone, even those girls who won't turn into hideous freaks to the boys they love? What it felt like on this side was: wonderful and terrifying. Breathtaking.

“Okay,” I said.

He grabbed my hand. “Let's pretend we were never here,” he said, and I remembered him telling me that before, when we'd gotten back from our first walk outside the room together, just three days ago. But in hospital days, it was a lifetime. And now, Connor leaned down and kissed me on the cheek.

It happened so fast. I didn't get to kiss him back or to thank him, or to even just say how much he'd done for me in that place. Because then he was gone.

Just gone.

And then, almost instantly, my mother shot inside my room.

“You okay?” she asked brightly.

I couldn't look at her. I remembered walking outside with Connor, and for a moment, it was just us. That was the reason we left.

I nodded. “Just a minute, okay?” I said.

I heard the ocean call of her going back into the hallway, and only then did I bring myself up to sit. Again, that makes it sound easy, but it was not easy. The day had nearly ruined me. I didn't know it then, but it would be awhile before sitting was easy, before moving in my body was normal again. I thought I knew so much already, but I didn't know anything then. Nothing.

I sat up and I leaned over and opened the top drawer of my bedside table. I slid the top off so Frog could breathe. I looked
down and watched her struggle, even in the smallest stretch of space.

Hard shell or soft center. Which is the best way? This I know from biology class last year: a turtle dies without his shell. Her shell. That, I remember.

I thought of the frog heart, the way it jumped beneath my hands during our dissection, and I didn't know what the next morning would bring, or what would come after, or after that, but I did know now that somehow my heart would miraculously keep beating.

I remember Collette cutting off my hospital bracelet four days after the surgery. What would that have been? Day Twenty? Day Twenty. I was like a dog freed from her leash. But it was also like I didn't
need
the leash. Like I was going to be fine on my own. I left it there on the swingy table, along with that horrid plastic pitcher and the plastic blue box with these three Ping-Pong-like balls I was supposed to raise up by sucking in air ten times an hour to keep the fluid out of my lungs. I didn't look at my IVs, the connections dangling from the stand like alien tentacles.

Zoe had taken Frog home, and I left everything else. Pulled back my thin, unwashed hair in an elastic band, tugged on my way-too-big jeans, tied my Converses, walked into the hallway, and waved good-bye.

I was so weak and stooped over from all the incisions, but I was so strong.

I could feel the bag pulling at my stomach, a mysterious tug as I stepped into the elevator with my mother. I had been on the twelfth floor. Who knew? I don't recall ever noticing, I thought, as I walked out of the hospital and into the sun. My father was waiting there, the car idling in the circular drive, like he was
picking us up from a hotel. I wanted to drive, and I did have my learner's permit after all. It was the oddest thing how much I wanted to drive, but even I knew I was too weak, that if anything happened, I didn't have the reflexes to prevent an accident.

“Can you imagine?” my mother said when I brought up the idea. “After all this?”

Yes, that made me think of Connor. Every time I got into a car after leaving the hospital, I thought of Connor watching a car crash, over and over again. It was good, I thought, to think of someone else for once. So: I tried to be in Connor's head for a moment, seeing the world as he saw it, watching that girl die like that. And then, as my mother helped me into the front seat where she thought I'd be most comfortable, I tried to see me through Connor's eyes. Here he is watching me put on my seat belt, here he watches me buckle it, so carefully, my stomach still stapled. It's all I can do to sit up straight. So what does he see? Someone who is leaving way different than when she arrived. It's like I was in transition, not yet hatched, waiting to be this new fixed and damaged me.

I thought of Connor watching me pull up to my house. My house! I had left it before camp, in
July
. It was almost mid-September, already fall, and my father's rhododendron had already flowered, petals fallen, and waxy leaves flanked the house, along with the flowerless little branches of the azalea bushes. Zoe came outside, pulling the door shut behind her, just after Mabel ran out barking wildly in the front yard. I got out of the car, slow as an old person. After the surgery, my stomach hurt differently. It was like a wound now, something healing, becoming a scab
that is becoming a scar. I ignored the crinkling of the bag and the fear I would always carry that it could come undone.

I focused on the healing part, on being out of that hospital with its smells and its sounds and the needles and thermometers and the heart monitor I was hooked up to after the surgery. I focused on the surgery being over, not on the pain of waking up from it. I focused on Mabel, moving toward me, her ears swinging, her dog smile and dog sounds.

“Mabel!” I bent down with considerable discomfort and let her lick my face. “Mwah!” I said. “Mabel!” I could still be a vet, I was thinking. If I got super into physics (this year) and dissecting the fetal pigs, which were next year's victims, maybe I could do it.

That's when I saw him, his red-blond hair catching the afternoon light, as if a halo hovered above him. He had on his wrinkled jeans, a frayed blue-and-white-striped oxford, unbuttoned, a Sunshine House T-shirt peeking out beneath. My jeans were so loose on me, and I pulled them up as I placed my hand over my eyes to shield them from the sun.

Bright, glowing Connor. In a surf shirt.

“Welcome home,” he said, helping me to my feet.

My mother got out of the backseat and gave a hard look to Zoe.

“What?” she said. “He just showed up here.”

Everyone looked at Connor, including my dad, who, feigning exhaustion, sort of threw himself across the car hood that ticked with heat.

Connor smiled. How can I describe it? Cockeyed, charming,
devilish, mocking, sweet. Cocky. All in one boy's crooked smile. “Hi.”

My mother inhaled deeply. “Connor,” she said. “Darling. We have to get Lizzie settled in. We've just arrived, as you can see. You have to give us some time.”

He nodded quickly, swallowing. “Can I just take a minute with Lizzie? I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm so sorry to barge in like this.”

I saw my mother go from really hard to really soft in one moment. “Of course,” she said. “We'll just be inside.”

My family walked up the steps and into the house. I sat down on the steps and scratched Mabel's soft scruff. Connor said, “Why, hello, Mabel!” and then he sat down next to me and I felt like I'd known him forever.

“I wanted to see you outside of that place.”

I nodded. It felt like we were now equal. I was dressed, for one, and upright, but also I felt different. I leaned my head on his shoulder. Because I wanted to. It was as natural as breathing. I breathed.

He shook me off him. “Hey, so, I just wanted to see you, okay? I'm just saying.”

I looked at him. His eyes were so blue, but they were very far away. It was almost like I could see clouds passing across them. “Okay.” I righted my head.

“I have to go now,” he said. “Anyway, your family is waiting.”

“That's okay,” I said. “They understand.”

“I have to go,” Connor said. That's what Connor Bryant, on my front steps, said.

“Go where?” I looked straight ahead at the Dominicos' house
across the street. They had painted their shutters green while I'd been gone.

Connor kissed my cheek and got up. “I'm going. I just have to go.”

I could hear his keys jingling, the key chain twirling around his finger, as he walked down the drive.

I touched my cheek. I did! Wait for me, I thought, my heart in my throat.

Before I'd even said hello, Connor was telling me good-bye.

Everything changed then. All my good feelings. All my power. Who was I to say I didn't need my bracelet, a leash? Okay, the colon was gone, but who was going to save
me
now?
Save me save me save me
, was all I thought as I struggled up the stairs to my bedroom. Well, save me and why me.
Why me why me why me?
I felt that power drain out of me, like I was an old car leaking oil onto the road.

I heard my father at the bottom of the stairs, and I knew he was looking up to me, both hands on the banister. I was sixteen years old and I was winded when I reached the top.

I went into my bedroom and shut the door.

My room. That hideous blue, those purple venetian blinds.
Zip.
I opened them. The sound like the Velcro of the blood pressure cuff. Dust motes in the light. A
Moonrise Kingdom
poster hung lopsidedly on the wall across from my bed. My Velvet Underground banana poster.

Two twin beds. One I slept on, a headboard slapped with stickers I couldn't remove. Hello Kitty. Butterflies. Orphan Annie. Also the Beatles and Wonder Woman and dancing bears. The string of dusty lights I hadn't yet turned back on. The other
bed, covered in old teddy bears and ugly dolls I couldn't, for some reason, throw away. Because I'd once loved them? Perhaps. I threw the new one from the hospital on the heap as well.

My little bag from the hospital had been unpacked. David B's God's eye was on my desk, laid there sweetly by my mom. She had also fanned out the pamphlets from the hospital on my bed.

About Your Ileostomy:
Guidelines to Help You Care for Your New Ostomy at Home.
So there won't be paella or nights asleep in Spanish castles, I thought.

Frog was there too. Zoe had taken good care of her, and she had this big tank on my desk, and a heat lamp, and I could see her hiding beneath one of the fake ferns.

“Hi,” I said, peering in.

She slammed into her shell.

“Okay then, bye.” I backed away to get a better view.

My phone! Someone had taken it out of my camp stuff where I'd been storing it, uncharged, and I plugged it into my computer. I felt that almost long-ago buzz of it charging, which instead of making me happy and relieved, made me anxious. How many messages? How many ways would I have to tell people what had happened to me? This was also why Connor was so important. He had been on the moon with me. Why hadn't he just left me there?

I heard a soft knock at the door. “Honey?” my mother said. “Are you okay in there? Do you need . . . help?”

I closed my eyes. For a while, but again, not like I was going to speak and close my eyes. I will always despise that. “I'm good, thanks,” I said.

“Is
it
okay?” she asked.

I knew she meant the bag. I think she wanted to see it. But that was never going to happen.

“It is, Mom,” I said. “I am.”

I could still hear her hovering.

“I'm just getting settled here,” I said. “I'll be downstairs soon.” I'm not going to lie: the thought of walking down those stairs was daunting.

I heard my mother pad away and then I opened my Mac. As I turned it on, I took a moment to praise myself for having it password protected, and made my way in. (Mabel 1/2/05—anyone could have figured it out.) There I was. There we were: Dee, Lydia, and me on a class skiing trip last year. It was the last time we'd do a thing like that; we were too old now. I think we were too old then, too, but I still remember the hum of the bus wheels beneath us while we sat on the bus together, me across the aisle from them. In the back row two couples were making out, and someone was passing around a bottle of Coke that was also half rum, but we were only listening to music and braiding one another's hair and talking shit about Nelly R, who had hooked up with someone's boyfriend that weekend. We were so stupid then. And Lydia still had her braces. My hat had a pom-pom on top.

While I waited for all the news of the real world to pummel me, I shuffled through the mail on my desk. There wasn't much; my mom brought most of the stuff I'd be into to the hospital, but she'd left the brown envelope from Nora that said:
Do Not Open Until Home
blazoned in red across the back. I opened it.
For the
strongest girl,
Nora had written with a silver metallic Sharpie on the plastic of the old-school CD case. She'd pasted a picture of a woman cut from a magazine, overly tanned, with pumped-up muscles in muscle-woman position on the song list folded inside.

Nora.

I slipped it into my computer, which sucked it in like it was starving. And then: “Close your eyes, give me your hand, darlin'. Do you feel my heart beating.” I had to smile. Girl bands. We listened to them at camp when we were campers, hairbrushes and pretend beehives, jumping from bed to bed.

Girl bands.

I unfolded Nora's handwritten song list. The Supremes, 7 Year Bitch, Sleater-Kinney, Spice Girls, the Go-Go's, TLC, Sister Sledge, the Bangles, Le Tigre, Say Lou Lou.

Nora.

I turned the song list over:
Girl Groups: Because no one can do it alone,
Nora had stenciled. She'd drawn these really delicate birds and butterflies and also these skull and crossbones, a string of dancing bears.

This was what I thought then: there are different ways to be saved. There are the doctors and the nurses and the parents and there is the boy who comes and sweeps you off your feet and then there is the girl who comes and lies on your bed with you and tells you everything, makes it seem all her secrets are only for you. Who cares if they actually are? You can't do it without the girl. Without a girl. So I ask you: How could I ever turn off the lights here?

Downstairs I could hear the clank and crash of my parents making dinner together, crab cakes and baked potatoes, my favorites. I had just started eating solid foods—it had begun with broth and Jell-O and then rice and then a vegetable or two. It all seemed to be working. It. It seemed to be okay.

But Connor was gone. He had left.

I opened my closet, to face the mirror hanging on the door. How many hours had I spent in front of this mirror? Leaning in, learning how to put on eyeliner. Backing up to see if a skirt was too short because before all this starvation stuff, my thighs were never an asset. How many times had I changed and changed and changed? I wanted different clothes and better clothes and cooler clothes, and I wanted to be thin and easy in my skin and casual in everything, but I was not that. Now I could see the faint smudge that had once been Dee's lip gloss kiss.

I stood back. I could see all of me and I was tiny. My jeans folded over at the zipper, so much extra fabric. I'm not going to lie: I liked being that small. I liked feeling like I had slipped into these jeans, a delicate, pedicured foot into a glass slipper, as opposed to the way I had to force myself into them at camp, like a rag-wool-socked foot being shoved into an old muddy duck boot.

Who wouldn't rather wear a glass slipper? If you were going to the right place, anyway.

But it was the first time. The first time there was a full-length mirror with me alone in front of it.

I did it: I unbuttoned my jeans and let them fall to my ankles. My hip bones jutted out and my stomach sank in. But that's not
what I saw. What I saw—all I could see—was the bag, which hung just to the right of my belly button. It was just a regular plastic bag, stuck to me. One end of it was tucked into the Gap boy shorts my mom had brought to the hospital. When I lifted up my T-shirt, I could see the top of it, to where the small intestine came out of my stomach—the stoma—and into the bag. There were so many powders and tapes and creams and flanges I would need to change it and make sure it didn't get irritated or open unexpectedly, but I'd had to deal with none of that then. All I had was the visual, and it looked so not a part of me. Of myself.

Sleater-Kinney screamed out from my computer. “Why do good things never wanna stay? Some things you lose, some things you give away.”

I dropped my T-shirt and the fabric covered it. It was almost, for a moment, like the bag was gone. I pulled up my jeans, buttoning them carefully so as not to jostle anything. I felt the staples of my incision against the rough denim.

“Lizzie?” my mother called up, like I had been here every night, my mom calling me down to set the table or peel these carrots or grate this cheese. “Lizzie!”

I opened the door and Mabel was seated outside, quietly, waiting.

“I'm so sorry!” I said, bending down with considerable effort to pet Mabel. I'd had no idea she'd been waiting for me. “I'm coming,” I called down, shutting my door and picking my way slowly, gingerly down the stairs.

The smell of alcohol and urine and starched sheets, the scent
of the hospital I only now realized I'd been smelling for just about three weeks, was gone. Here was garlic and butter and chives and vinegar.

“Okay!” I said, walking into the warm kitchen. “Here I am.”