They snort a kind of laughter that implies not only is this not Paul but he is so far removed from Paul it’s comical.
“What do you want with Paul?” a beefier version of the same kid asks.
“Do I know you? Wait, aren’t you Lee Wilcox?” I ask him. This throws him off. I see him deflating and backing up at the unexpected loss of power. “I know your mother,” I say. “You used to come and have playdates at my house when you were little. I think we still have your sippy cup in the cabinet.”
Just like that, little Lee Wilcox turns from an unrecognizable hoodlum into a child. Oh, my God, I just used the word hoodlum. I am getting old. Still, I’m happy to see this knocks him off his game. Not only that, but from the way they’re looking from him to me back to him I can tell his friends will have a field day with him once I leave. Humiliated, Lee Wilcox steps back and someone else steps up in his place.
“Tell him if he ever talks to my daughter, Cameron Friedman, again I’ll have him arrested so fast he won’t be able to blink. I’ve called the police and they’ll be checking this parking lot from now on and if any of you are around they’ll haul you in for questioning.”
They look as though I have just spoken Czech to them.
“Am I making myself clear?”
This is surreal. As I walk away, though, the fun stops.
“Fine with me.” A boy steps out of the shadows of the library overhang. He is small and wearing short sleeves even though it’s cold outside. In the yellow glow I see that his Albino-white hair is thinning and the wisps of what’s left look fragile, like at any minute they’ll blow away and this slight child will be as bald as a chemo patient. The whiteness of him is startling. He appears to glow in the dark like he’s been exposed to nuclear fallout.
“Are you Paul?” I ask him even though it’s unnecessary. The others have all backed away, some flipping their skateboards, others tapping cigarettes out of packs, trying to look older, reaching for cans I am sure are beer. Somewhere in the distance a motorcycle revs at a red light, reminding me I’m not far from Ashland. I could run to the street and call for help. The light must have changed, because the hum of the engine turns and wheels screech.
“Cameron’s the one who dragged us here to begin with,” Paul says. His voice is unexpectedly deep and it occurs to me he might make a good DJ. A good face for radio, I imagine someone saying to him.
“What do you mean she dragged you here?” I ask.
“I mean she dragged us here,” he says. “We liked the 7-Eleven better anyway, but for some reason this was the place she tells us we need to be, so whatever. Fine with me, I tell her. I’ll go to the fuckin’ library if that’s what you want. Go where the action is. And believe me, Cameron’s the action.”
He didn’t have to add that part. I knew from his emphasis on for some reason it was the drugs. He said it slowly and punched up some. Like I’m Forrest Gump and wouldn’t have understood. He wants me to take the bait. He’s looking for a reason to call in his posse or whatever rich white kids pretending to have street cred call it. He’s waiting for my reaction.
“So what’re you, the dealer or something?” I ask him. I jut my chin at him. I’ll play the game for him.
“Someone’s got to keep Cameron going.” He shifts on his feet and folds his hands into the kangaroo pouch in the front of his sweatshirt. Another fishing expedition to see what it’ll take to break my calm. It’s like showdown at the OK Corral.
“I’m not saying it’s me,” he adds. Someone in the dark chuckles at this. “I’m just saying … your girl’s a good customer, know what I’m saying.”
Then, for dramatic effect, he steps back and disappears into the night. I call out, “You remember what I said. Don’t ever come back here. And don’t you dare come near my daughter ever again. You got that, Paul?”
I didn’t expect nor do I get an answer.
The following day after the kids leave for school I start my search.
I’m used to seeing Cammy’s room a mess but this time instead of seeing it as a typical teenager’s room, it’s a minefield. Or a crime scene that needs to be carefully picked over but left intact.
She wouldn’t leave anything important on the floor. Too obvious. Under the bed, nothing but random shoes, old makeup kits she got on birthdays past. Now to the drawers. A few thongs I didn’t know about, but overall, nothing surprising. In the closet I feel like I’m getting warmer. On the shelves, sweatshirts and sweaters stuffed within reach. Her clothes are all black now. At least the ones that still fit her. Oh, my God, the shopping day. The new school clothes I promised in lighter, brighter colors. I can’t believe it slipped my mind. There are seven black or brown hoodies, each one different versions of the same unflattering baggy sweatshirts. I take them off in balls so I can return them unnoticed. Nothing behind them. On the top shelf there are old shoe boxes that look promising. I go through them one by one but nothing. Old diaries with entries like today I have to clean my room and Brianna is my best friend EVER in childish handwriting I miss. Camp letters she’s saved. Pen pals. Nothing recent.
Where would I hide something? She’s so hell-bent on being an adult, fine. Where would an adult put something she wants no one to see …?
I squeeze the pockets of all the hanging clothes, the jeans, the few shirts that haven’t been trampled. Nothing but some loose change and ponytail holders. The last pair of pants I get to, the ones all the way at the end of the hanging rack in between old khakis she hasn’t fit into in years, something crinkles. A piece of paper, it feels like. I reach in for it. It’s a typed letter, folded in thirds. A business letter.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Friedman,
We received the requested letter from your daughter’s doctor and are saddened to hear of her condition. Because all the required documentation has been provided we are hereby releasing the information we feel is medically relevant.
What the hell is this? I turn it over and look at the envelope and can’t really wrap my head around what I’m reading. It’s legit. I skim over most of it but sentences jump out at me. I picture Cammy reading this and it makes me sick.
Blood tests taken at the time indicate the birth mother was in fact a serious drug user and traces of methamphetamines were noted.
Oh, Jesus, she knows.
On the floor my legs have pinpricks from sitting cross-legged. I fall back and stretch them out, staring at the glow-in-the-dark star stickers Cammy put up when she turned seven. The Beanie Babies she collected are jammed into a corner of her bookshelf. Shells from a long-ago trip to Florida are still lined up on another shelf, arranged largest to smallest so that the conch shell is first, in front of a beat-up copy of Where’s Waldo? She’s blind to these things, they’ve sat there for so long she no longer sees them. I realize I don’t know this girl now. This Cameron is a stranger to me. Sweatshirts and long black skirts and woven shoes Bob calls Jesus slippers. Black romper-stomper boots. An Evanescence poster hanging above her bed. A picture of Jimi Hendrix making a peace sign is over her desk. Marilyn Manson. On the floor not far from where I’ve collapsed I see a black eyeliner digging into the carpet. An empty bottle of grape vitamin water. A crinkled-up report on Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. She apparently got an A- on it. Figures Kafka would be her best subject. There’s Visine. And a cool tin cylinder of Binaca. I muster up the energy to move. Forward movement. Momentum. I get on my hands and knees and step to standing like an old lady in a stretch class. It’s dark in here. I lean down to pick up her pillow—the only straightening I do because I know she won’t notice. I hold it close before throwing it back to the top of the bed. One side is wet. Not soaking but a spot that is trying to dry is at the center of the white case smudged with mascara. Without thinking twice I smell it. I know this smell. I am paralyzed. My feet are rooting to the floor like the first time off the high board at the swimming pool down the street from my childhood home, only now I can’t turn around and go back down the ladder.
Is it Ricky’s sem
en? Paul’s? How are they getting in here? I cross over to the window and I have my answer. Whoever it is has been climbing up the tree outside her window. Jesus Christ. I feel sick. I run to her bathroom and hunch over the toilet. Where have I been? Who am I that I don’t even know my own daughter? I know one of the only Beanie Babies she couldn’t find was the pink Princess Diana bear. I used to know when her periods were. I knew she hated brussels sprouts. This was the girl who needed help tying her shoes long after her friends had been doing it on their own. The nausea has passed. I straighten up and use toilet paper to wipe under my eyes.
Sex. My daughter’s having sex. And I have no idea who she’s doing it with and she’s into serious drugs and she’s freakishly Goth and where the hell have I been?
Whatever forged documents she supplied to the adoption agency were probably printed out right under our noses. How she faked medical records is beyond me, but this is a child who has gotten straight A’s in Computer Workshop and anyway they all know computers inside and out, so I’m sure there are places she can access that would give her the information needed to copy a doctor’s letter.
I call Bob at work and get his assistant.
“Hi, Grace, it’s Sam. Is he around?”
“Oh, hey, Sam. Do you want me to wake him up?”
“He’s sleeping?”
“I know,” she says. “A little early today. He usually turns off his phone but I can tap on the door if you like.”
“What time does he normally sleep?” I ask. “I forget.” I lie because I have to. Because my husband has apparently slipped lower than I’d thought.
“Oh, you know, sometimes it’s two. Sometimes two-thirty.”
“Right. Don’t wake him. I’ll talk to him later. Thanks, Grace.”
I put my head in my hands. It feels like I’m right on the edge of quicksand. Bob’s gotten sucked in. I could reach for him but that would only pull me in too and then what would the kids do? Someone’s got to save this family.
If we have to hire a private detective, fine, but first I try to do what Cammy did online. I Google her and instantly she is in front of me. Geraldine Wilkes is all over the globe. Not our Geraldine Wilkes, but then again who can be sure. It takes me a solid hour of clicks and nothing. I’ve always assumed she died of an overdose years ago. I start out West, typing in Los Angeles along with her name, and that leads me on a wild-goose chase. San Francisco. Portland. Miami. Dallas. Boston. New York—all the same. I spend an hour on the computer and stupidly don’t think to plug in Chicago. I figured she’d have left the city after giving Cammy up. Too many people would have asked her where her two-year-old daughter had gone. I would have moved away for a fresh start. Or maybe she stayed behind and fell into drugged despair but then cleaned herself up. Three names jump out at me. One is a schoolteacher on the South Side. Another is a potter who has exhibited her work in several craft fairs and, clicking on the link to her Web site, I see she is far too old to be Cammy’s birth mother. The final one chills me. Geraldine Wilkes, librarian, Lincoln Park branch of the Chicago Public Library. The library. Cameron’s the one who dragged us here. For some reason this was the place she tells us we need to be.
I don’t know how the rest of the day passed but it did. I threw something together for dinner. Meat loaf I think.
After three hours or so of restless sleep waiting for morning to come, daylight has arrived and I can finally begin the day. I’m up early. In front of me is a day that is already weighing heavily, like a fight you know you’re going to have to get into. To keep busy and to help time pass I uncharacteristically make breakfast, stirring pancake mix and rattling pans until the boys stumble down, sleep still in their eyes, rubbing them at the sight of me, on a school day, making a weekend breakfast. Seven a.m. feels like noon, I’m so sick with exhaustion.
“Wow, mark this day on the calendar,” Bob says, coming in with two dots of Kleenex on his freshly shaved face. “Pancakes on a school day.” He doesn’t say it in a nice way. He takes a pancake and folds it in half into his mouth.
“Why don’t you sit down like a civilized human being and eat with the kids,” I say.
Any second the flurry of Cammy will descend. She’ll stuff a pancake into her mouth on her way out the door to Margie O’Donnell’s car. She’ll do this to tweak me, knowing I’ll say the same thing to her I said to her father. She’ll do this to try to get back on track with me. She’ll do this to regain equilibrium. She’ll do this because she is a teenager and it is her job to make her parents crazy. She’ll rush out the door with no idea that I’m onto her. The game’s over.
“Andrew, go call your sister. Tell her breakfast is ready.”
“Cammy! Breakfast is ready!” he yells from his chair at the kitchen table.
“I’ve got to run,” Bob says, already halfway out the door. “See you tonight. Hey, Sam. You need me to pick anyone up tonight? I’ve got a clear afternoon.”
I look over at him while I’m shoving Ziplocked baby carrots into a lunch bag. He’s making an effort. It doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy. I don’t appreciate it. He wants me to but I don’t. After all this time, all my begging and pleading, it’s fake and temporary. Too little, too late.
“Nope.” I go over to talk to him out of the boys’ earshot. “I need to talk to you about Cammy.”
“Can’t we talk about it tonight?”
“I thought you said your afternoon’s clear.”
“Sam, I don’t have time to get into this now,” he says. “Let’s just talk about it later.”
“So you were offering to pick the kids up knowing I’d say you didn’t have to? You fake-offered?”
“I gotta go. Bye, guys!”
“What’re you guys talking about?” Andrew asks. “Are you fighting?”
“No,” we both reply at once.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full. Jamie, that’s enough syrup,” I say.
Then I tell Andrew to go call his sister down again, which buys us a few more seconds. I lean over him to whisper as he picks up his briefcase. “Bob, listen, we need to talk about the game plan here.”
Cammy walks into the kitchen. “What’s up with the pancakes?”
She directs this question to the boys. They shrug in between bites. Beats me just go with it and don’t ruin it for the rest of us, their shoulders say. She’s taking the temperature of the room.
“I’ve got to run, see you later,” Bob says. And he is gone.
“Eat quickly, it’s time to get going,” I tell them. “I don’t want you keeping Mrs. O’Donnell waiting. Shoes, backpacks. Get coats, it’s supposed to get colder later.”
“I don’t need a coat,” Andrew whines. “It’s not even that cold out.”
“Take one anyway. Jamie, you forgot your lunch. No, put it in your backpack now or you’ll leave it in Mrs. O’Donnell’s car like last time. Andrew, coat! Yes, okay, you can wear your fleece but don’t lose it.”
Cammy and I avoid eye contact. She’s out the door without a word and I go to the computer to check my in-box.
Please let there be an e-mail from him.
Cammy
Sometimes I want to yell IS ANYBODY OUT THERE? I feel like I’m in this parallel universe and I’m invisible. Some planet I’ve landed on to observe the human life-form but I can’t speak the language. No one hears me. Like that kind of nightmare where you open your mouth to scream for help but nothing comes out.
Like Ricky’s father. Ricky’s father has a hole in his throat and talks with some machine that makes him sound like a robot. It’s seriously fucked up. Ricky never ever talks about him—I can tell he’s embarrassed. Like one time his dad came to open house when we were in seventh grade or something. Maybe sixth. Ricky pretended he wasn’t his son but then in the hall where the parents were looking at our science projects on display his dad put the thing to his neck and said “This.Is.So.Good.Richard” and everyone stared, not to be mean but just because they hadn’t ever heard something like that. That
was the last time his dad ever came to school. I think about what Ricky must’ve said to him at home to keep him from coming again and it makes me want to cry for some reason. If I ever ask about him Ricky’ll look through me like he didn’t hear and then he says “Anyways.” and we end up talking about something else.
The reason I haven’t burned this diary yet is that it helps me remember what I do when I get fucked up. Lately I’ve started forgetting. Even simple things. So I’ve started arranging a schedule. I try not to take the blue pill before four in the afternoon—if I take it earlier my buzz peaks at six and then starts wearing off and by then everyone’s home and around and that’s just what I want to escape from. Plus it’s harder to get stoned even now with a lock on my door. I don’t have to worry about the smoke detector … I took the battery out months ago … but stuffing the towel under the door and getting the fan to blow the smoke just right out the window instead of back in—it’s all a pain in the ass. Getting stoned when the pill wears off is good but not as great as it used to be. It used to only be two hits and if I timed it right I was good. Mellowing from a mellow, like Paul says. Now it takes two bowls. But it’s hard to remember what I’ve said or what I haven’t said. Or things I’ve done. Like a little earlier tonight I got a text from Monica saying Stp stalking me u freak and I looked at my call log and I guess I called her like nine times this afternoon but I totally don’t remember it being that much.
I just don’t get why she won’t talk to me anymore. She gets with everyone so it’s not like me getting with Will broke her heart. I mean, NOTHING breaks her heart. She was seriously the only one who got that this place sucks the lifeblood out of you. Any original thought is beaten out of you with NOTES TO PARENTS that have tons of emoticons and exclamation points.
It has come to our attention that students are gathering behind the school at the maintenance exit during free periods. This is not allowed. Please take the matter up with your child. We have a no smoking policy that is enforced. All the rules and regulations can be found in the attached booklet, if a refresher is needed.