—
I RUN OUT to the porch and down the lawn. When I am some distance from the house, I reach around, breathing hard, and pull the Who Am I card off my back.
Luke Skywalker.
Tomkin loves him. He looks good in white. Yoda is a little green friend. He has sex appeal. Bess didn’t see the second movie. His father is not his father.
Penny knows nothing. But Tipper let her wear my pearls, the pearls that tell the story of Buddy Kopelnick, and an unwanted pregnancy, and a husband who forgives his unfaithful wife.
She let my sister have the pearls that tell the story of me.
I realize: my weak jaw, my malformed teeth, now restructured into beauty…my father wanted to fix me so that I looked like him. He erased the Buddy Kopelnick in my face, telling me I had no choice.
I am drunk. I throw myself into the tire swing, spinning, careening, letting the swing whirl my body into something approximating the chaos I feel inside.
Buddy, Rosemary
Codeine and Jim Beam
Pfefferman, Kopelnick
My father is not my father
My face is not my face
My sisters are not my sisters
She gave the pearls to Penny
I spin, and cry, feeling I have lost my place in this small world I’ve always lived in, sobbing until my body feels like it can’t possibly sob anymore.
* * *
—
“HEY THERE.”
I let my feet touch the grass. The swing slows to a stop.
Pfeff stands on the lawn, his hands behind his back. He looks like a statue, his skin almost blue in the moonlight.
“Go away,” I say. I don’t want him to see me crying. “Please just leave me alone.”
“Carrie.”
“What?”
He steps toward me. “Are you okay?”
“Obviously not.”
“All right, then.”
I turn away and wipe my eyes, though there’s no hiding my distress. “I can’t explain,” I say. I don’t want him seeing me like this, drunk and raw and illegitimate.
“So don’t explain,” he says in a whisper.
“It’s not your business.”
“Okay.”
“Just ’cause you told me you didn’t get into Amherst doesn’t mean I’m going to share all my secrets with you.” Words spill out of me, the bourbon loosening my tongue. “So will you please go away?”
He keeps standing there, his eyes in shadow.
“Why are you guys even here, still?” I ask petulantly. “You came for like, a short visit, and you’ve been here ages. Don’t you have anywhere else to be?”
“I think you know why we’re still here.”
“No. You’re just here, and still here, and still here.” My head is dizzy from spinning. Fogged from all my tears.
“Think about it, Carrie,” Pfeff says softly.
“Is it the Ping-Pong table? The shortbread? The parlor games?”
“Very funny.”
“Yah, that’s me. A never-ending river of joy and laughter.”
“But you know the real answer,” Pfeff says. “Why am I still here?”
“I told you to leave me alone,” I say. “I’m not having the best night and I’m in no shape to guess riddles.”
“You don’t need to guess,” he says. “The answer is right in front of you.”
39.
PFEFF GRABS THE tire swing with one hand, and reaches for me with the other, and before I know it, he is kissing me. I am light-headed and his lips taste like orange cake and he needs a shave. He’s tall and bends down to reach me.
Pfeff traces his
fingertip along my neck and pulls away to say: “Please come with me. To my room. Okay? Please, Carrie.”
He kisses me again.
“Please,” he says. “Please.”
* * *
— I GO
with him
back to the heady dark softness of his room
in Goose Cottage.
We take off our clothes, listening to the crash of the water outside and the chirp of the crickets, our skin salty, our
breath uneven,
codeine and Jim Beam running through my system.
40.
“I AM WORRIED,” says Rosemary.
“About what, buttercup?”
She is waiting for me when I get back from Pfeff’s room, very late that night, long after everyone in Clairmont is fast asleep.
No one else ever sees Rosemary. Not since that first night, when Tipper told her to stay away. When I’ve been hanging out with her and someone else comes along, Rosemary just leaves. She vanishes so quickly I almost think I imagined her in the first place.
She doesn’t know how she does this trick, just like she can’t really say where she sleeps when she isn’t here, only that it is “soft there,” warm and dark.
“I’m worried,” she repeats, “that you’ll do something terrible.”
“Things with boys aren’t terrible,” I say. “I know they seem weird when you’re little.”
“I don’t know how to say it. I’m just worried.”
“Don’t be.”
“You smell like alcohol.”
I go into the bathroom, brush my teeth and take a Halcion. My lips are swollen from kissing. My body is alive to the cold of the water and the brush of the towel.
“I love you,” she says, through the door.
I open it and come back to my room. “I love you, too, Rosemary.”
“Can we make bracelets?” she asks.
“Oh my god, buttercup, it’s the middle of the night.”
“I really want to,” she says, wiggling in anticipation, stamping her feet lightly.
I absolutely do not want to make bracelets. I want to lie on my back and feel the Halcion slide through my veins and think about Pfeff, and the dark of his room, and everything that happened between us. His lips on my neck.
Rosemary is too young to understand. She doesn’t want me to grow up.
“I can’t be a child with you forever,” I say gently.
“That’s not it.”
“I think it is, buttercup. You know I love you a million loves. I am so lucky you’re here. But ghosts come back to their houses because— You’re a ghost because something’s wrong, yes?”
She nods.
“How can I help you feel better?”
She pouts. “I just want to make bracelets.”
I am trying to be kind. But the challenge of helping my sister come to terms with the end of her life—it’s a lot. I love her so much. I try to be nurturing, consoling—and I will try every time I see her, until what? She finally feels safe? Knows she is beloved? Feels that she has really said goodbye?
“Please, buttercup,” I say. “Go to sleep.”
“Can I lie down next to you?” she says. “Just for a little.”
“M-kay,” I say. I change out of my dress.
Rosemary wants a cup of water.
She asks me to braid her hair before bed.
The Halcion begins to work.
She’s hot and wants to lie on top of the blankets.
She doesn’t like the whir of the fan.
The drug is dragging me down into sleep, and when I set my head on the pillow, finally, I drift off to the sound of my sister singing gently to herself.
“Hey hey hey hey.”
41.
PFEFF PULLS ME into the Clairmont mudroom and presses his mouth to mine. Then he takes a drink from his cold can of Coke and touches his icy lips to the hot skin of my neck.
He tells me I smell good.
He tells me he wants me.
He finds a place to set the Coke down so he can touch me with both his hands, and when it seems like I’ve kissed him so much my knees will buckle, he releases me.
We take the sailboat out, just the two of us, and spend a sunny afternoon completely alone, our bodies intertwined on the warm wood of the deck. As I run my fingers along the skin of Pfeff’s bare back, I am awestruck at the magic in the world. I am allowed to touch him, to thread my fingers in his hair, to skim his earlobe with my thumb. It is like a miracle, that two people can find each other so perfectly imperfect. That we can see the uniqueness in one another, celebrate it, communicating through touch. Blindfold me and I’d recognize the feel of his hands on me, the scent of his neck, the curve of his shoulders under my palms.