“What do you think you know?” He hisses. His breath is hot on my face, unbearably close. When I don’t answer, he grabs me by the cheeks, squeezes them like Keith. “What do you think you know, huh? You want money, is that it? What do you think—”
It takes both of my hands to get him off me. He pushes me to the ground and my chin connects with the driveway before the rest of me does, my skin wearing against the pavement. I spit, roll onto my back and stare up at him and then I scream. He jerks toward me and I scramble back, dirt and pebbles tearing into my elbows. I yell louder, letting my voice become one clear, ugly note across his perfect life.
“Dad, what the hell—”
Silas takes several steps back at the sound of his son.
“Oh my God, Daddy—”
Kendall.
Noah and Kendall stare stupidly at the scene in front of them not knowing what to make of it. They see blood, they see me on the ground, they see their father standing over me and they don’t move. Neither of them move to help me.
“She’s not who she says she is.” Silas points at me and I get to my feet slowly, watching the blood from my nose pattern the pavement. “I met the Holdens—I met them this morning and this is not their daughter. She’s some kind of … drifter. Some thief! She tried to steal my phone, she pulled a knife on me—”
“Oh my God.” Kendall moves to the house. “I’m calling the police—”
“No!” Silas bellows and she stops in her tracks. He points to me. “You—get the hell out, get the hell off my property—get out of here!”
I take halting, dazed steps to the car. Silas moves away from me and Kendall rushes forward and grabs at his arm, pulling him to her. I sniff and immediately regret it, the taste of blood thick and metallic at the back of my throat. I ease into my car slowly and pull out of the driveway. By the time I’m at the end of the street, I’m shaking so hard, I don’t know how I’m driving and in my head, three, no four words:
451 Twining Street, Langford … 451 Twining Street … Langford.
When Silas Baker’s house feels far enough away, I pull over.
A long, long time ago, when Mom had just left, I ran a fever of 105. May Beth was too many states away, visiting family and I was so sick, I didn’t know my own name, no matter how many times Mattie called me by it.
Sadie, I think you’re sick.
Sadie, you gotta tell me what to do …
Sadie, I think you’re dying.
She ended up phoning my boss, Marty, who bundled me into his pickup and took me to the hospital an hour away, where they stuck an IV in my arm and waited for the numbers on the thermometer to go down. May Beth cut her family vacation short just to look after me and I was so mad at everyone I didn’t speak to any of them for a week.
Whole thing ended up costing us too much.
I stare down at myself. My shirt is soaked in my own blood, my nose still bleeding. I’m glad Mattie isn’t alive to see this because I can just imagine her hands fluttering uselessly beside me because she never knew what to do when I needed something, when I needed help. Never. You can’t blame her for it, though. She shouldn’t have had to.
She was just a kid.
Kids shouldn’t have to worry about that kind of stuff.
It’s not right any other way.
THE GIRLS
EPISODE 4
[THE GIRLS THEME]
ANNOUNCER:
The Girls is brought to you by Macmillan Publishers.
WEST McCRAY:
Arthur, Keith and Paul.
These are the names May Beth Foster gave me. Men who were with Claire long enough they might know something about Darren M., the man Sadie claims is her father.
Arthur is dead, like May Beth told me he would be. He lived with Claire and the girls for six months, when Sadie was thirteen and Mattie was seven, and overdosed two years later. May Beth doesn’t have much to say about him. He was a dealer. Keith, there’s no record of anywhere. I put a team on finding him. By May Beth’s accounts, Keith lasted longest. He came into the girls’ lives when Mattie was five and Sadie was eleven.
MAY BETH FOSTER:
He was the one who really tried. He looked after those girls as best as Claire would let him. Keith was my favorite.
WEST McCRAY:
Why is that?
MAY BETH FOSTER:
Well, whenever Claire brought a man home, it was like … my heart would just sink because it always ended worse than it started. And it always started bad. Keith didn’t start bad. He picked Claire up at the bar, Joel’s, found her there—she was often there … and he brought her home. And he was stone-cold sober. That stood out to me. Not as a bad thing, mind, but Claire usually had men as wrecked as she was. That first night, he put her to bed, and then he introduced himself to me.
Right away, I liked him. He treated me like … he treated me with respect. He treated me like I was the girls’ flesh-and-blood grandmother. That meant something to me. Then I come to find out he was a God-fearing man, and I believe in the power of prayer myself. He taught the girls a little religion. So that was—I liked that a lot. He was only supposed to stay the weekend. He stayed a year instead, and if I’d had it my way, it would’ve been forever.
WEST McCRAY:
Describe his relationship with the girls.
MAY BETH FOSTER:
He told me he’d always wanted kids and this was the closest he’d ever got, would probably ever get to having them. Mattie thought he was wonderful … he had a sort of juvenile sense of humor, and she was young enough to enjoy it. Sadie—well, she never liked Keith.
WEST McCRAY:
Why’s that?
MAY BETH FOSTER:
He was sober, like I said. I know how that sounds but … he didn’t use. He didn’t get in the way of Claire using, but he was clean himself. He just accepted Claire for what she was, and wanted to be part of their lives. Maybe that’s a sickness in itself, enabling … but he tried to create structure for the girls and up until that point, Sadie felt that was her job. He was an interloper, in her eyes.
WEST McCRAY:
You’d think she’d want a little of that stability for herself—that an actual adult in her life would let her be a kid again.
MAY BETH FOSTER:
She didn’t know how to be a kid. Mattie was so wound up in Sadie’s purpose, Sadie was terrified of losing that.
WEST McCRAY:
How did it end between Claire and Keith?
MAY BETH FOSTER:
Terribly. That much followed the pattern. She kicked him out in the middle of the night. I could hear her screaming at him from across the lot. Damn miracle nobody called the police. I looked out the window and she had all his things on the lawn and he was shouting back at her.
Claire just got tired of them, you know. Once she felt she got all she could from them, they had to go. This was no different. He grabbed all his things and left. He walked past and saw me watching from my window. He waved good-bye. I never saw him again.
Tell you the truth, I cried over that one.
WEST McCRAY:
Paul Good works for a logging company in the Northwest. He looks it too; he’s a tall, muscular guy, with red hair, a beard, and a tanned, sun-worn face. He’s not a particularly hard man to get ahold of, but it does take him the better part of a week to decide whether or not he wants to speak on the record. He was with Claire Southern for eight months, sure, but it was a difficult time in his life. He was using. He was depressed. Four years clean, he wasn’t sure he wanted to revisit it.
PAUL GOOD [PHONE]:
I don’t know I got a lot to say … or what exactly it is you want me to say.
I look back at that time and I think … I was a kid. I was a mess. I mean, I got a family now. I got a wife, I got a little girl of my own. I don’t know what I thought I was doing then. No … that’s a lie. [LAUGHS] I thought I loved Claire.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
How did you two meet?
PAUL GOOD [PHONE]:
Oh, Jesus. I was driving home—Abernathy was home, then—from the bar. I was drunk too. I shouldn’t be saying that. It was stupid, but that’s not my life anymore. Anyway, she was walking. She was walking in the dark, on the wrong side of the road. [LAUGHS] It’s amazing I didn’t kill her. I pulled over and asked her if she needed a lift and she said yes, and soon as she got in that car, she starts crying. She’d been having a rough night, drinking for some of it—but she was more sober than I was. Talked my ear off on the way to her place. When I got her there, she told me I was a good listener and maybe I could, you know, do that for her again. She didn’t invite me in that night, but man … she got me.
The first part of our relationship was on the phone. And I fell in love with the life she sold me, which was a lot different than what it actually was … the way Claire told it, her mom was sick and she cared for her. Then she got pregnant. Then her mom died and then she got pregnant again and she was looking after two girls alone. She sounded so devoted to ’em and I’d always wanted kids myself.
I moved in with the three of them and then the truth really come out. I mean, there were signs that she had some problems … she drank too much—on the phone, I could tell when she’d been drinking. She’d nod off. That was the heroin. By the time I realized the extent of it, she was my heart. I didn’t mind the kids but I loved Claire. So I started using too. I made myself sick for her.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
Paul entered the girls’ lives when Sadie was fifteen and Mattie was nine.
PAUL GOOD [PHONE]:
They didn’t hate me or nothing, they just didn’t want me. So I stayed out of their way and they stayed out of mine. They probably deserved better from me, though. There wasn’t a whole lot of consistency in their lives and I could see Sadie was trying to give that to Mattie. I left her to it.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
What was Sadie like?
PAUL GOOD [PHONE]:
Stubborn as hell. Hated her mother. Sadie thought she knew better’n Claire so far as Mattie was concerned and she probably did, if you want the truth. But her and Claire were always at each other’s throats … and Claire favored Mattie, so it got ugly sometimes. I don’t know. Like I said, we stayed out of each other’s way and if I sensed a screaming match coming on, I ducked. Only thing I cared about was Claire and crack.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
Tell me how it ended.
PAUL GOOD [PHONE]:
She got tired of me and I was running out of money. One day, I come home and found her with another guy. That was it. She didn’t respect me. Dumb thing is, I still loved her, but I couldn’t stay with her after that. Damnedest thing, though …
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
What?
PAUL GOOD [PHONE]:
After I left, it was like a fog cleared in my mind. I realized I wasn’t living the life I was supposed to, that I didn’t actually want to be an addict. So I packed it up and I just left town … ended up here, got clean. It sounds simple when I put it like that. There wasn’t anything simple about it. But getting out of Claire’s orbit was the first step. That place—those girls … it just had this feeling … I don’t know if I should say it.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
I’d like to hear it.
PAUL GOOD [PHONE]:
Like the three of them were doomed. I guess I always knew there wasn’t going to be a happy ending for ’em. When you called me, caught me up on what happened to all of them … I don’t know. I want to say I was surprised but I’m not. But it’s sad. It’s damn sad.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
Paul, in all the time you were with Claire, she ever mention a Darren?
PAUL GOOD [PHONE]:
Can’t say she did.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
So you’ve never heard that name before?
PAUL GOOD [PHONE]:
That’s right.
WEST McCRAY:
When I’m done talking to Paul, I give May Beth a call.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
We’re kind of at a standstill in terms of what more I can do right now.
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]:
What does that mean? You’re giving up?
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
No, it just means I’ve got to dig in and try to find a new lead. If I don’t find one, we’ve got to hope some new developments occur in the meantime.
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]:
Well, that sounds like giving up to me. We don’t have that kind of time. Sadie’s out there, and anything could be—anything could be happening to her—
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
It can take a long time to work a story like this, May Beth. I know that’s not what you want to hear but you’ve got to be patient, okay? You’ve got to be patient.
[LONG PAUSE]
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]:
I might have something.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
What?
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]:
I might … I might have something that you can use. I don’t know. [PAUSE] I just don’t want to get her in trouble but … but then, if she’s—if she’s already in trouble, and this helps you find her …
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
What is it? What do you know?
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]:
I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want her to get into trouble over this, I just—I want her to be safe. I want her to be here. [PAUSE] But I don’t want her to get in trouble. She’s had it hard enough.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
Okay … okay, May Beth, do you remember what you said, the very first time you called me?
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]:
I wanted you to help me.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
Yeah, that’s right, but do you remember how you put it? You told me you didn’t want …
[LONG PAUSE]
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]:
I don’t want another dead girl.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
So whatever information you’ve been holding on to … you don’t want that to be the difference, between finding her alive and not, do you? If Sadie’s alive, and you think what you know could get her into some kind of trouble, you have to look at it like she’s alive to fix it, you understand? As long as she’s alive, she can fix it. We can fix it.
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]:
I know, but …
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
I can’t find Sadie, let alone help her, if I don’t have all the information. And I have to be able to trust you as I move forward with this. We can take it off the record, if that helps. Do you want to do that?
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]:
Yes. Please.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
Okay, then that’s what we’ll do.
sadie
Greetings from Sunny L.A.! Wish you were here!
I’m parked on the shoulder, almost clear of Montgomery.
I just needed to stop a minute.
I stare at the postcard, palm trees lining its front.
I turn it over slowly.
Be my good girl, Mats.
The night before Mom left, I was sleeping on the couch. I can’t remember why I wasn’t in my bed, but I wasn’t, and I couldn’t have been waiting up for her because I never did. I was just there, stretched out all wrong, my feet hanging over the arm, my head sunk in the middle of the cushions. She’d been out with one of those men she liked to keep in her back pocket, the kind she could get a drink or a dime from, but didn’t necessarily have to bring home. I woke up to the feel of her fingers lightly petting my hair and I felt so small, like I never did, like I imagine Mattie must have often felt having always been Mom’s favorite.
She reached for the remote and turned the TV on low, going through the channels until she finally gave up. She bent her head close to mine and twisted a strand of my hair around her finger, tucking
it absently behind my ear. I remember my muscles tensing at her touch, giving me away, and being so afraid she would stop because of it. She didn’t; we continued the charade. Me, pretending to sleep. Her hands against my forehead, then the soothing carefulness of her fingers combing through my hair. We stayed like that for … it must have been an hour, maybe a little less.
I thought, this is what it feels like to be a daughter.
I thought, God, no wonder Mattie loves Mom.
Then she brought her face close to mine and whispered, “I made you,” in my ear.
That’s when I realized she was sober. My mother wasted was the default. Her sobriety was like a punch in the stomach in the rare event I witnessed it. I wanted her sober all the time, even if she didn’t like me better for it. We stayed like that until I fell asleep for real and in the morning she was gone and I knew. I knew it was forever and I knew there was no way I could explain it to Mattie. She almost didn’t survive it.
But then this … I trace the edges of the postcard.
Just delayed the inevitable.
I was sixteen. I dropped out of high school, which was a lot less complicated than I thought it would be. I remember standing outside of Parkdale, waiting for someone to stop me, to tell me I was throwing my future away, but I didn’t live in a place that possessed that kind of imagination. For some people, the future ahead is opportunity. For others, it’s only time you haven’t met and where I lived, it was only time. You don’t waste your breath trying to protect it. You just try to survive it until one day, you don’t.
I rest my head against the seat and breathe. I slip out of my shirt and the air turns my skin to gooseflesh. The front of my shirt looks like a crime scene. I grab a bottle of water from my bag and wet the clean back of the shirt. I use it to wipe off my face, my beat-up elbows. I go through my things again, grab the cleanest shirt I can find and put it on. I shove the bloodstained one under the backseat so I don’t have to look at it and check my face in the mirror. The scrape on my chin looks ugly. My nose is swollen, achy and tender to the touch. I don’t know if it’s broken. I don’t know what I’d do if it was.