Each time we had sex from then on, I told myself that this was the closest you could get to another person. So close their breaths become your own. So I gave him all of me, believing I could trust him.
Then, on New Year’s Eve, I talked too much to a guy at a party while Rogerson did business in another room. Outside he yanked me by my hair and pushed me against a wall, where I’d clocked the back of my head against a planter, making it bleed. I saw in the New Year at Corinna’s, stoned, with a warm washcloth pressed against my head—Rogerson explained how I’d been tipsy, too much beer—while everyone counted down and clinked champagne glasses. Corinna gave Dave a long, sloppy kiss and said, “This is our year, baby.”
“You say that every year,” he said, laughing.
“No. This year, it’s true. I can feel it,” she replied. “California, here we come!”
“Happy New Year,” Rogerson said, and then he kissed me. But for the first time since all of this had started—the hittings, and the sex—it was different. I still felt something, but not like I had before. I was wary now.
“Happy New Year,” I’d responded, like the robot I felt I was becoming. I looked down at my necklace, running my fingers over the patterned squares. Even though it had just been days earlier, Christmas Eve—and those gentle hands on my neck—already seemed like another world.
The next day he bought me a CD and took me to the movies, where he held my hand, his fingers locked around mine. I couldn’t focus on the film, something about the apocalypse and only one man who could save all humanity. Instead I kept looking at Rogerson, the light flickering across his face, and wondering what lay ahead for us, and me.
There was no pattern, no way of knowing when to expect it. After New Year’s a week passed until the next time, then just a couple of days, then two weeks. Whenever he did hit me, I could count on him being sorry for at least twenty-four hours: a safe period on which I had come to rely, like home base. Those were the good days. But once they were over, all bets were off.
But no matter what we were doing, the fact that he hit me was always on my mind. When we had sex, especially, I couldn’t push it out of my mind, however badly I wanted to. The Rogerson kissing me or stroking my stomach couldn’t be the same one who lashed out so easily, who pushed me up against walls or smacked me. It seemed incongruous, against all logic, like a theorem you could never prove in geometry. And in the moments afterward, as we lay there together, I’d hold him so close, as if just by tangling myself with him I could keep that Rogerson with me, banishing the other forever. But no matter how hard I tried, he always managed to slip away.
It got to be that sex was the only time I could count on being safe. And it never lasted long enough.
Then we’d be driving, stoned, on our way somewhere, and then somewhere else after that. Before it had been exciting, new, to always be in transit. But now I felt like I was drifting, sucked down by an undertow, and too far out to swim back to the shore. I never even tried to change the station anymore, instead letting his music fill my ears and all the spaces between us, heavy and thick, like a haze.
Wake up, Caitlin. Mr. Lensing wasn’t the only one who’d noticed.
“Caitlin?” my mother would say to me at the dinner table, as I pushed around my food, my sleeves pulled tight to my wrists even though she kept the heat cranked and there was a fire crackling and snapping right behind me. My mother was cold-blooded. “Honey, are you okay? Aren’t you hungry?”
“Caitlin!” the dance coach would bark as I flubbed another cartwheel or missed a step, finishing out the clumsy death throes of my cheerleading career. “Get with it, O’Koren! What’s the matter with you?”
“Caitlin,” Boo would say, trying to hide the hurt in her face as I shrank back from her in photography class—the only time I ever saw her anymore—when she tried to squeeze my arm or shoulder, saying hello in her touchy way. “I miss you.”
“Caitlin?” Rina would ask in our one shared class, history, fanning her hand over my eyes as I zoned out, half-listening to her detail another dramatic blow-up with Jeff. “Hello?”
“Caitlin,” Corinna would say. “Hand me that lighter.”
“Caitlin,” Stewart had said more than once, “you look like you really, desperately, are in need of some wheat germ. Seriously.”
And finally, the one voice to which I snapped to attention, every time.
“Caitlin,” Rogerson would say, and I’d listen so hard, trying to tell just by the cadence what might happen when we were alone. “Come on.”
Wake up, Caitlin, Mr. Lensing had said. But what he didn’t understand was that this dreamland was preferable, walking through this life half-sleeping, everything at arm’s length or farther away.
I understood those mermaids. I didn’t care if they sang to me. All I wanted was to block out all the human voices as they called my name again and again, pulling me upward into light, to drown.
I had known since December that punctuality could mean the best or worst of things for me with Rogerson. But now things were getting harder.
Rogerson picked me up for lunch every day right at noon. This gave me exactly five minutes to get from my trigonometry class, which was on one side of campus, through the packed hallways and crowded courtyard to the small turnaround near the auto mechanics classroom where he always waited for me.
But no matter how quickly I left class—even after changing my seat, so I was right by the door and could leap up the second the bell rang—he always managed to get there first. I’d round the corner, out of breath, to see the car parked there, engine idling. I’d know Rogerson was behind those tinted windows, waiting and watching.
Sometimes, it was just a little rough: a blocking bruise. Other times, a hard foul. And if things were really bad—full contact.
It was always easier for me to think about it this way. Sports was my father cheering Saturday morning football, Cass lifting the all-state trophy over her head, our entire family at university basketball games, roaring with the crowd. Sports were safe, even when Rogerson wasn’t.
Even the days that I skipped fourth period so I was there first, sitting under the little scrubby tree by the curb when he pulled in, it didn’t seem to make him any happier. It was like he wanted to be mad, so he’d have an excuse to do what he did to me. And he was doing it more and more often, as winter headed into spring. The bruise on my arm I’d gotten courtesy of Mrs. Dennis, my trig teacher, who insisted on keeping me after class a few days earlier to discuss my lack of class participation and a failing quiz grade.
I started skipping her class, because it was easier. I’d sit under that tree, my knees pulled tight against my chest and smoke cigarettes, my eyes fixed on the entrance to the turnaround. There were rules of play here, technical fouls, illegal movements. I had to be careful.
I couldn’t talk to anyone because if Rogerson saw me he’d assume I was (A) flirting or (B) discussing him. One day Richard Spellman, class president, tried to sit down and talk to me about some stupid group project we were doing for English. I just shook him off, edging farther and farther away: I knew I could guarantee myself full contact plus a few hard fouls if Rogerson saw us there together. But Richard just kept talking, oblivious, while I picked at grass blades, my stomach churning, and hid behind my sunglasses, pretending I was invisible. I was getting good at that. When he finally left it was only a matter of seconds before Rogerson pulled in. So close. So, so close.
The only person I ever really spoke to at school anymore was Rina, and not much at that.
“Let’s go out tonight, just us girls,” she said to me one day, as we sat together under my tree. The bell had just rung and she’d plopped down next to me, stretching her long legs out in front of her.
“I can’t,” I said.
“Why not?” She fumbled in her purse for her sunglasses—black with cat’s-eye-shaped frames and tiny rhinestones in the corners—and put them on, leaning her head back to look up into the mild winter sun.
“I’ve got plans with Rogerson,” I said.
“You always have plans with Rogerson,” she said. “We haven’t done a girls’ night in forever, Caitlin. I’m in withdrawal here.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, watching as a black car—not him—sped past on the road in front of us. “But I made plans already.”
“Oh, come on,” she said, popping her sunglasses up on her forehead and looking at me. “What could be so important to blow off your best friend? Again.”
I sighed. Rina always made this hard for me. “I’m not trying to blow you off,” I said. “I just already told him we’d do this thing together.”
“Okay, fine,” she said, flipping her hand. “How about this ... we’ll go out early, get a burger or something, and then you can meet him later somewhere.”
“I can’t,” I said again.
“God, Caitlin!” she said, exasperated. She pulled her purse onto her lap and started digging for a cigarette, grabbing my lighter with her other hand. “Look, just let me talk to him, okay? I’ll tell him you really need some girl time and I’ll promise to have you back home at a decent hour. Let me handle it. I’ll tell him—”
“Rina.”
“I’m serious,” she said. “I know how to handle this. He’ll understand. He’s coming to pick you up right now, right? So I’ll just talk to him now.”
She just didn’t understand. “It’s not a good idea,” I said.
“Sure it is,” she said easily, tossing back my lighter. “I can deal with Rogerson. No problem. By the time I’m done with him he’ll be putty in my hands.”
“Rina, I said no.” She didn’t know what she could do to me. What kind of full contact I could expect at the slightest intervention. My stomach already binding tight, a burning there that seemed to grow each day.
“Not another word,” she said lightly, blowing me off while exhaling a long steam of smoke. “It’s taken care of.”
“Rina—”
“Hush. I told you. It’s—”
“No,” I snapped, louder than I meant to, and she jerked back, surprised, like I’d slapped her. “I told you, I can’t. That’s it.”
She cocked her head to the side, her face hurt. “What, you’re not allowed to hang out with me anymore or something? He’s telling you what to do now?”
“No,” I said, as another black car passed by, the light glinting off it. “He’s not.”
“That’s sure what it sounds like,” she said, an uppity tone in her voice.
“Well, it isn’t,” I said.
We sat there for a few minutes, not talking. All around us people were passing by, on their way to the parking lot or their next class, voices high and laughing. I was thinking back to all those nights of driving and crying, when I listened to Rina wail as the scenery sped past. She could tell me anything, as long as we were in motion.
“What’s going on, Caitlin?” she said suddenly, moving a little closer and lowering her voice. “Tell me.”
I look at her—my best friend—with her strawberry-blond hair and pink Coral Ice lipstick, and for a split second I wanted to let it all spill out. About the importance of time, and the helpless feeling I got every time I saw that black BMW, not knowing what waited on the other side of the tinted windows. About hard fouls, and full contact, and those mermaids, pulling me up to drown.
But I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell anyone. As long as I didn’t say it aloud, it wasn’t real.
So I smiled my best cheerleader smile, shook my head, and said, “It’s nothing, Rina. You worry too much.” I concentrated on keeping my voice chipper, all pep: I’ve got spirit, yes I do, I’ve got spirit, how ‘bout you?
Rina cocked her head to the side, studying me. She wasn’t a dumb girl; she knew something was up. But she still had faith in our friendship, forged in the war zone of junior high. She thought I’d never lie to her.
“Okay,” she said finally, as if we’d bartered out some kind of agreement. “But if you need me—”
“I know,” I said, cutting her off. It was right at noon: My safe time was up. The muscles in my stomach and shoulders were clenching harder as I picked up my backpack and began to move closer to the turnaround. I looked at her, sitting cross-legged there in her sunglasses, popping her gum, with no greater concern in her life right then than me. And I envied her, quickly and quietly, in a different way than I had all those years we’d spent together.
“I gotta go,” I said, and she nodded as I backed away, turning my head to look over at the parking lot entrance where Rogerson was pulling in. I was on time, but just a few feet too far out of sight. I knew she was watching me as I walked toward the car, the engine purring, low and growly, like a dog just warning you to stay back.
I didn’t know what to expect this time. Trash talk, a hard foul. Full contact. I took a deep breath, walked up to the car, my reflection staring back at me in those black, black windows, and stepped across the sidelines, into the game.
While I was working on being invisible, Cass was slowly coming back to us. She hadn’t called on Christmas Eve, which had made my mother teary the entire time we opened gifts and had our annual pancake breakfast with Boo and Stewart the next morning. Cass did send a card, with a picture of her and Adam inside. They were standing in front of their own tree, a small scrubby pine with a few lights, one of those homemade paper chains, and a tinfoil angel on top. He had his arm around her and they were both smiling; Cass looked as happy as I’d ever seen her. My mother put the picture in a frame, immediately, and parked it on the coffee table, displacing a series of glass teddy bears and a small basket of potpourri.
“I’m trying to understand what she meant about keeping her life her own, about boundaries,” I heard her say to Boo Christmas day as they cleaned up the kitchen. My father was parked in his chair, watching a game, with Stewart dozing on the couch, one hand on his stomach. “But this is Christmas, for goodness sake.”
“She’s coming around,” Boo said reassuringly.
“She seems to think that we controlled her somehow, that we were too involved in her life.” I could hear my mother washing dishes, the water splashing. “And now, I guess, we’re not. Or something.” And she sighed, again, that low, sad Cass-sigh I’d heard daily since the summer.
Cass’s gifts sat under the tree until we dismantled it. My mother, always fair, had even bought one—small, but still there—for Adam. Then they were moved to the hall closet, still in their brightly colored paper and ribbons, and stacked behind the vacuum cleaner.
When she had finally called, about a week into the New Year, I was lying in my bed, sleeping after another late night, as well as a fresh wrist-wrenching bruise, courtesy of Rogerson. I knew it was Cass just by the way my mother’s voice jumped from its normal, polite hello to a gasp of excitement I could hear clearly through my door and down the hallway.
“Happy New Year to you, too!” she cried out, and I could hear her moving around, looking for my father so she could get him on the extension. This was harder for him. He’d get on the line and listen, talking to Cass only when prompted, and then in short, formal sentences, his voice low, as if she was someone he knew only formally. “How are you, honey? How was your Christmas?”
I could hear her going through the kitchen to my father’s study, her heels clacking across the floor. I rolled over and closed my eyes.
“Oh, yes, we had a wonderful time. You missed the blueberry pancakes. But you were on our minds. It just wasn’t the same without you.” A pause, and then she whispered, “Jack, it’s Cassandra. Pick up that extension.”
My mother made affirmative noises as Cass described her Christmas, and then I heard my father say, “Hello, Cassandra.”
“Oh, it’s so wonderful you called!” my mother chirped, her voice so full and happy. I pulled my pillow over my head trying to block out the sound.
“How’s the weather up there?” my father asked, and it was quiet as Cass responded. “Well, that’s New York in January fo
r you.”
“It’s been lovely here,” my mother added. “What? Oh, she’s fine, so busy. Her cheerleading is just going wonderfully, and she’s so caught up with school and this new boyfriend of hers, Rogerson, she’s busy every night. She’s just wonderful.”
I reached up and examined my wrist, feeling the tenderness right by my watchband. Wonderful, I thought.
“I’m sure she’d want to talk to you,” my mother went on, and I could hear her starting down the hallway toward my room, the cordless in her hand. “I think she’s still sleeping, but I can—”
I pulled the pillow tighter, letting my body fall slack just as she opened the door a crack, peeking in.
“Caitlin?” she whispered. “Honey?”
I stayed perfectly still, concentrating on breathing evenly: in, out. In, out.
“Oh, my,” my mother said softly, “she’s still asleep. She’ll be so sorry she missed you.”
I waited until I heard the soft click of the door shutting again before I opened my eyes. Her voice faded as she walked back to the kitchen, still cooing as she took in Cass’s every word.
The truth was, I didn’t want to talk to Cass. So far everyone who had noticed something was different in me had been distracted enough by their own problems—Rina with Jeff, my mother with Cass, even Corinna with Dave and her work—that they accepted my easy explanations about falling or clumsiness and didn’t look too closely. The only one who acted as if she might have sensed something was Boo, but she’d never try to pry it out of me. It wasn’t her style. So it was easy, in photography class or over dinner, to ignore her thoughtful glances, to sidestep her questions with the standard dinner table answers: Fine. Busy. Nothing special. I’m just tired.
But my sister was different. We were too alike, and I was scared that she’d be able to tell something was wrong with one word, one sentence, instantly guessing everything. And I couldn’t be found out, not by Cass. She was the strong one, the smart one. She would never have let this happen to her.