“Apparently?” How long had it been, exactly, since Mel had last spoken to her mom?
I go to hug her, but I get as far as grabbing her hand and stop. I use my other hand to fish out smokes. We both light up when the driver says, “No smoking in the car.”
“Just let us out,” Mel tells him.
We start walking down Knickerbocker, Mel a few yards ahead. “Mel,” I call. It’s early morning. Everything has a gray unreal quality, usual boundaries knocked aside. I grab her hand again.
She repeats, “Are you sure.”
“Yes.”
One corner of her mouth jerks. She puts her hands through her hair again. Mutters, “Jesus Christ.”
We get to the studio and we’re hit with the smell of our home—mildew, coffee grounds, ink. It’s a mess. Clothes strewn everywhere, non-photo blue pencils rolling off the table onto the floor, cigarette butts at the bottom of High Life bottles. Mel pulls out her duffel bag. I watch her bang around the room for a moment, throwing things—underpants, socks, a bottle of Teacher’s I didn’t know she had—into it. This is Mel’s way: not mood swings but peaks and valleys, control and then controlled fury and then uncontrolled fury. But the air this morning is different, precarious and swollen with blood. We’re coming up over the mountain now. She can’t find something she’s looking for. She bangs around, muttering, “Son of a whore,” and I ask her, “Can I help? What are you looking for?” And she just shakes her head and mutters, “It’s fine, it’s goddamn fine.” And there’s more thuds and a tennis shoe is thrown at the wall, then a sketchpad, then a bottle of contact solution, then she kicks the wall and screams, “Fuck,” and then she ducks into the bathroom and stays in there for twenty minutes.
I go outside, head churning, to crouch on the sidewalk and smoke. I call Avis and rent a car. I hear the lady in the basement apartment moving things in her kitchen. I watch the traffic glow, beads falling down a string on the BQE.
It occurs to me that if Mel has any family members to call, I don’t know about them. There are times when, after more than ten years, I’m not sure I know Mel at all. But I do know enough to leave her alone right now.
Finally she comes downstairs, duffel packed, hair combed back, the bottle of Teacher’s sloshing in one fist. She uncaps, takes a pull, hands it to me.
“Well,” she says. “We should probably get out of town.”
—
I put the address for the Central Florida Women’s Correctional Facility on the dashboard and take 278 out of the city, cross the Verrazano, and hit the New Jersey Turnpike. Pass the power plants glinting in the sun, then surge into the countryside, everything too bucolic for an hour outside New York City. Mel is quiet, drinks, fiddles with the radio a bit. We make it our business to not talk about where we are going or why. I look down when we reach a Pennsylvania town with a long German name and am surprised to find myself still wearing a cocktail dress.
We gas up and pull into a Rite Aid. Mel troops alongside as I grab a basket, toss in Chex Mix, vitamin C, Dexatrim. She scrunches her nose, waggles the pills at me.
“I’ve larded up,” I say. “Some have clearly taken note.”
“Some people wouldn’t take note of their own ass with two hands and a flashlight. Pardon the expression.”
I grab a bottle of orange juice and push it into her hands. She looks at it doubtfully. “No sale, dude.”
“You’ll drink it and you’ll like it.”
I hear her mumble something about taking a big ole bitch injection as we approach the counter. A woman of maybe seventy with blue hair and a large silver cross around her neck picks up our basket. She scans slowly, turning the pills upside down, searching for the bar code. I train my eyes on the rows of Winstons and Pall Malls over her shoulder, feeling Mel wavering behind me. Between Brooklyn and this Rite Aid, she’s managed to get herself completely soused, even more than she was last night.
I swipe my credit card. Too slow. The cashier looks to me, glum. “You need to swipe a-giyin.”
“Did you know,” Mel says loudly, voice garbled. “Did you know my mom didn’t want me to be an animator?”
I smile tightly at the cashier. I’ve heard this story before. “You’ve said.”
“She thought it was weird,” Mel continues. “No, actually, you wanna hear what she really said? She said it was a faggy thing to do. Brilliant, right?”
The cashier’s eyebrows lift. The receipt prints. She reaches for a bag.
“I mean, she’s one to be giving career directives,” Mel says, gathering steam. Here we go. The vitriol too nuclear to go in Nashville Combat, following us into a Pennsylvania Rite Aid. “Like she had any perspective outside of which brand of cream works best on recurring chlamydia.”
The cashier freezes and stares at Mel. An open plastic bag hangs loose in her hand.