“Maybe it’s some kind of phase she’s going through.”
“A phase? A phase?” Her mother’s voice rose. “She’s cutting herself, David.” Her father murmured something, too low for Rain to hear. “I mean it. Enough is enough,” her mother said. “You’ve got to do something.”
“What do you expect me to do, Beth?”
Then her mother started to cry. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I just know this is beyond me. I can’t handle this.”
Rain had retreated to her room, sick with shame. In the morning, her parents announced they were sending her for therapy. A shrink, she thought—to shrink me. Though if she got any smaller she would disappear for real.
She placed her pajamas on the foot of the bed and slipped on a clean pair of panties—totally nude she felt too exposed, even though the shade covered the window. Then she opened the bottom drawer and pulled it free from the dresser and carried it to the bed, emptied the contents and turned it over. She knew her mother snooped in her room when she was at school, going through it like a customs inspector, and she was relieved to see she hadn’t discovered the razor blade in its hiding place. She picked at a corner of the Scotch tape from the underside of the drawer, freed the blade. The tightness inside her body made it hard to breathe. She took the blade and drew it across the pale skin of her left hip, felt the relief as blood surfaced. After a minute she drew a second line. She was real. She existed. She shivered, her near-naked body now cold. She pulled a Kleenex from the box on her dresser, folded it into a precise oblong, and pressed it against the new cuts, holding it there until the blood clotted. The cramp in her belly eased, nearly disappeared. She retrieved a large Band-Aid from her stash hidden in the bottom of a tampon box, tore off the paper, and placed the bandage over the cuts. She was always careful that there were no traces of blood on her clothes or bedding. She always flushed the old Band-Aids and bloody tissues down the toilet in the morning. She had never been a devious child, but she had become adept at fooling grown-ups: her sad-eyed father; her mother, who went through her room every day, searching for clues; and her teachers.
Duane was right. She was a freak. A loser. A total screwup.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Instantly, even hungover, I realized I had really screwed up.
When I heard my name, I believed Sophie had come to me in a dream; then she spoke again, was in the room with me. Not a dream. Here. Not in Washington. I scrambled up from the sofa where I’d passed out the night before and stumbled, momentarily dizzy. My head throbbed, my bladder ached, and my mouth was parched, but even with the hangover, I was acutely aware of my wrinkled undershirt and shorts, the sour smell of my body.
“Hey, Soph,” I said.
“Oh, Will.” Her body was rigid with an anger as sharp as a blade, and with disappointment, too, the more penetrating weapon. “You promised.”
What could I say to that?
She glanced around the room. “Jesus, Will.”
“I wasn’t expecting you,” I said, my brain racing, wondering what she was doing there. Shouldn’t she still be in Washington? I realized I didn’t even know what day it was. I looked around, saw the mess as Sophie must have seen it. Empty bottles. My shirt and pants draped over one of the Morris chairs. Shoes on the floor. A blanket and pillow on the couch. Food on the coffee table. She hated the room looking like this.
“What’s going on, Will?”
A thong? Why was she asking me why I was wearing a thong? What the hell could that mean? I looked down at my shorts, was instantly shamed to see they were stained. “What?”
“What’s going on?” she repeated.
Oh. I took in the plastic forks and boxes of half-eaten food on the coffee table—a pizza carton and half-empty boxes of cereal—and tried to calculate how long the binge had lasted, tried to remember how long she had told me she would be in Washington. She had left for Washington on Monday. Her testimony had been postponed until Tuesday. So this had to be at least Wednesday. I closed my eyes as if that simple act could possibly make the mess disappear. Instead of answering I said, “Let me get us some coffee.” I would have sacrificed a foot for a cup of coffee. Or a Coke. Water. Anything liquid. That and a piss. I retrieved my pants from the arm of the chair and pulled them on, relieved to see they were not stained too. With forced casualness, I made an effort to straighten out the room. I was aware of her eyes following me as I folded the blanket, gathered the cartons. I focused on each movement, willed my hands to stop shaking.
She remained standing. “So you don’t remember.” Her voice was flat. This was a statement not a question.
Remember what? Now I would have sacrificed both feet for a triple dose of caffeine. “Let me get rid of these,” I said, indicating the boxes. If I could get her to the kitchen, I could turn on the coffee. But the kitchen looked no better. An open peanut-butter jar. Cracker bits and bread crumbs and dirty knives in the sink. A carton of souring milk on the kitchen table. Empty ice trays on the counter. Moving as quickly as the hangover allowed, I dumped the milk down the drain, wiped the counters. I measured grounds, poured water into the coffee machine, careful not to spill. The need to piss was urgent. Sophie was talking to me from the living room.
“What?” I yelled. “I can’t hear you. Can you come out to the kitchen?” There was silence, and I could feel her weighing my request. As I reached for two mugs, my gaze fell on a squat cobalt-green teapot, and it brought on a rush of memory. The sprawling flea market set up on the edge of a farmer’s meadow. The autumn day. A lifetime ago. The moment Sophie fell into my life. Literally.