The Things We Didn't Say Page 14

  But then I saw her lip was puckered out and her eyes were all teary.

  I don’t think she’s actually sixteen, either. That’s what she said on Facebook, that she just turned sixteen. But she seems pretty young.

  I spent my own cash already—I never had much, but Tiffany made it sound like she had tons. Now we have no money and no ride and it’s snowing really hard out there, too.

  After the wallet got stolen I decided to call home with a calling card I bought for emergencies, since I wasn’t taking my phone. Tiffany was in the bathroom, and I called the first number that came to mind, Casey’s cell, the number I call if I need something during the day when Dad’s at work. But somehow my mom grabbed the phone and started screaming and then Tiffany came out of the bathroom and I didn’t want her to think I was chickening out so I hung up.

  “I think we should hitch,” Tiffany says, now swinging my hand in hers, which annoys me. I stiffen my arm so she has to stop and she gives me this little hurt look through her hair.

  “Yeah, and then we get hacked up into bits by some maniac. Good plan.”

  “C’mon, there are two of us. We won’t get in someone’s car if they look crazy.”

  “Not all psychopaths wander around drooling and rolling their eyes.”

  “Okay, no droolers. That will narrow the choices.”

  I allow a smile at this. “No, serious, Tiffany, we can’t. Have you seen the weather out there? W-w-w-we didn’t dress for standing by the side of the road sticking out a thumb. Someone would probably call the cops on us, an-n-n-yway.”

  We walk a few more steps, and I test the waters with something. “You know, we could call your parents.”

  She stops dead, forcing me to stop, too, by yanking on my hand.

  “We can’t do that! It’s horrible, I can never go anywhere or do anything, I’m like a prisoner in that house. I had to escape.”

  I look around to see if anyone heard that. A mother wheeling a stroller by gives us a long look.

  “S-s-someone will hear you.”

  Tiffany had told me all kinds of stories about how she was never allowed to go anywhere but school, the library, and church, and couldn’t even use the phone unless her dad was in the same room listening, and her only Internet access was taken away when he found out she was talking to me. She had to change her e-mail address and send me messages through Facebook and Gmail at the library when she was supposed to be studying. He took away her phone, too, when he found out she’d been sneaking calls to me.

  She said she had actual bars on the windows, and a lock on the outside of her room that he threatened to use if she disobeyed.

  This all sounded pretty bad.

  And she talked about running away alone, and I didn’t want her to do that and get abducted and murdered. So she said I could come with her. At first I thought that was a bad idea, but then school every day was awful, and I had no friends at my old school anymore either, then Angel and my dad and Casey started fighting all the time. I couldn’t even breathe, it felt like. My stammer got worse, and some kids at EXA started mocking it.

  Tiffany started talking about freedom, and it all sounded so . . . free.

  But she also sent me a picture of a model instead of her face, and told me she was older than I think she really is.

  “I’m hungry, anyway,” I tell her, stalling. “Let’s try to find something to eat.”

  “With what?”

  I sigh. I hadn’t wanted to do this, but I’m running out of options. “I’ve got my dad’s credit card.”

  She lights up like fireworks. “You do! That’s great! Let’s go to T.G.I. Friday’s!”

  I shake my head. “We can’t go anywhere where they have time to really look at the card and ask for ID and stuff. We should probably, like, walk to a convenience store and just buy some food where I can just swipe the card and scribble something on the paper. A gas station, someplace like that where they won’t care.”

  She nods. “Okay, fine, a gas station. Then we’ll hitch. Really, it’ll be fine. My cousin used to do this all the time, my mom’s cousin I mean?” She says that last part in a rush because she’d already talked about not having cousins, back in our first days writing to each other. “He said a couple can get away with it, no problem.”

  Outside the mall doors, through the blowing snow, I see the glowing sign of a gas station across the busy street.

  “Well,” I tell her as we turn to walk into the storm. “I guess. But I think we should go someplace warmer than New York. Florida or something.”

  “Oooooh!” she exclaims, skipping across rows of snow in the parking lot, raising her voice to be heard over the wind. “Disney World!”

  Yeah, right. Hey, kid, you just ran away from home with no money and no car, where are you gonna go now?

  Whatever, I’m freezing. Maybe hitching isn’t so bad, if we’re careful.

  Chapter 22

  Michael

  Of course I’ll drive,” my father says when I tell him I want to go to Cleveland, if nothing else so that when the police find him, I’ll be halfway there. Yet I dare not brave these wintry roads in my little Honda.

  “I was thinking I could just borrow your SUV.”

  “Have you slept all night? Certainly not. Driving sleepless is like driving drunk. I’ll be over as soon as I can.”

  “I can bring Casey, we’ll take turns driving.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t sleep, either.”

  I can’t refute this. Neither of us suggests I bring Mallory along. For one thing, she doesn’t have a license anymore.

  “I will drive you,” my dad says, hanging up the phone before I have time to argue.

  “I’m going to shovel the drive,” I announce to the house in general, though Jewel is reading in her room, Angel is upstairs on her phone, and Casey is on her computer downstairs forwarding Dylan’s picture to anyone and everyone she can think of.

  I need air. Plus, I’d feel bad if Dad broke his neck on our front walk.

  I sip in the cold outside. Mallory must have turned up the thermostat, because it’s gotten warmer than usual in there. I watch it carefully because heat costs a fortune and the house is old and drafty. That was one of our classic fights. What started as “Stop turning up the heat” would result in her shouting, “You don’t care about me!” and would usually veer into crazy territory from there, about how I obviously didn’t care about her because I was having an affair.

  The snow is wet and heavy, the kind that causes heart attacks when old folks try to clear their own driveways.

  Early in my career we had a huge morning snowstorm, and some photographers went out to shoot a photo for the standard front-page weather story. One of them took an ordinary shot of “man shovels driveway,” with the snow flying dramatically off the shovel. Later in the morning, I fielded a strange call.

  It was the man’s neighbor. Just minutes after that picture, the man had dropped to the ground with a heart attack and was not expected to live. The neighbor had seen the photographer taking the picture and had the presence of mind to call and beg us not to run it.

  We replaced the picture, and the man died later that day, in the hospital.

  I stop to lean on my shovel, panting with effort, and remember watching Dylan as he got swallowed up by the school doors.

  “Mike!”

  Mallory is on the porch, wearing one of my old heavy coats. As I look up, she picks her way down the slick steps. “Mike, I hate to bug you, but . . . would it be okay if you drove me home for a change of clothes? I can’t keep wearing your sweats, and I don’t think Casey wants me raiding her closet. Not that I could fit in her Gymboree pixie clothes anyway.”

  “Mal.”

  “Oh, come on, I’m kidding.”

  I would like to have Casey drive her, or even Angel, with her learner’s permit, could technically do it. But the roads are terrible.

  “C’mon, Mike. I just want to grab some clothes and a toothbrush. Is that so unreasonab
le?”

  “Fine. Let me at least clear a path, here.”

  I put the shovel back on the porch, and Mallory comes out the door with her purse.

  “I’ve gotta tell Casey . . .”

  “I told her,” Mallory says, brushing past me on the way to the car. “She’s fine.” Mallory plops herself in the passenger seat. “Didn’t this used to be your dad’s?”

  “My mom’s, actually.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I remember.”

  My mom’s old Honda. She never wanted anything flashy, despite my dad’s love for his SUV, so she tended to drive a Honda until my father would deem it too old and buy her a new one.

  Then he’d give it to me, so I’ve been driving my mother’s hand-me-down Hondas for years.

  I hate this goddamn car and everything it means. But I don’t want to have to choose between paying for band camp or making a car payment.

  “You’ll have your own car one day,” Mallory says, patting my knee as I crank up the cold engine.

  This is a rare peek for me inside Mallory’s apartment. Usually I’m in the car, and the kids go in or out the front door guided by Mallory, when she’s home, when she’s not “ill.” No reason I don’t go up to the door, I just don’t, and everyone seems to like it that way. Never the twain shall meet.

  The inside of Mallory’s apartment looks like Mallory’s dorm room circa 1993.

  Cast-off clothing covers every surface. She’s peppered the walls with cheap posters depicting landscapes and sunsets. The ceiling of the living room is covered with greenish plastic stars, the kind that glow in the dark when you shut the lights off. There’s a bead curtain between her living room and hallway. It rattles as she pushes through it toward the back.

  Strewn on the floor are some toys I’ve never seen, which must be Jewel’s. This rankles, to know that she has a life I’m not part of, even if it’s only some of the weekends.

  “Sit down!” Mallory calls from within the apartment, presumably her bedroom, where she’s packing a bag. “Make yourself comfortable!”

  I wander into the dining area, just a nook off the living room, really.

  She’s got framed photos of the kids on the wall, their eight-by-ten school photos, and I notice that these are the photos from the year she moved out. I know she has the new ones, I always make sure she gets some at my own expense. Is it laziness that prevents her from putting the fresh pictures in the frame? Or is it nostalgia for a time when we were all together?

  There are snapshots half spilling out of a photo-place envelope among the detritus on her kitchen table. I tilt my head to look at the top one. It’s Mallory wearing a bikini on a fishing boat, a burly guy’s arm possessively around her shoulders. They’re both pink with sunburn.

  “Jealous?” she says, coming from the back and noticing me looking at the pictures.

  “Ha,” I say. “Good luck to him.”

  She comes over to stand next to me. She’s squirted on some perfume. I don’t remember what it’s called, but she did used to wear it when we were married. She looks down to see which photo I’ve seen.

  “Oh, him. He’s over, anyway.”

  “Did the kids ever meet him?”

  “No. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Like hell it isn’t.”

  “Like I have any say in who you date, or get engaged to, or bring into the house to live.”

  “You knew all about her.”

  “Not at first.”

  “It was just a few dates, then.”

  “You were kissing her. And I had to hear it from Angel.”

  “I didn’t know she’d seen us. And . . . God, just stop.”

  My voice rings overly loud in the small space. In the silence that follows we glare at each other, and the tinny sounds of the neighbor’s television float through the wall.

  My cell phone rings. “Hi, Case. I’m on my way back.”

  Her voice echoes weirdly on my phone, but I can make out “police” and “Cleveland.”

  “Oh, God, is he okay?” I walk closer to the doorway, trying to get a better signal. Mallory follows like a shadow.

  “Yes, he’s fine. They picked him and the girl up for shoplifting. He’s at the police station, and I’ve got the address . . .”

  With Casey still talking in my ear, Mallory flings herself at me and wraps her arms around my waist, her face on my chest. I put one arm around her, reflexively.

  “I’ll be right back. Map it for me, will you?”

  “Where are you, anyway?” She sounds baffled, unhappy.

  “I ran Mallory home to get a change of clothes. I’ll be right there.”

  I hang up and Mallory holds tighter, murmuring, Thank God, thank God, thank God, into my chest, and I steal a moment to sink into relief with her, the other parent, who regardless of her faults is the only other person who can really understand how this feels.

  Chapter 23

  Dylan

  When the cop hangs up the phone and tells me my dad will be coming, I’m mostly relieved. So relieved I want to cry, but I’m embarrassed enough by my stammer and actually doing this stupid-ass thing that I don’t want to add to it, so I look at the cop again, the one who’s pissed at us.

  And Tiffany is pissed at me.

  “Come on,” barks the cop who called the house. “You can come sit in here.” We follow him to a beige room with a table and a few chairs. He tosses some magazines down, crusty, wrinkled ones probably borrowed from the waiting area in the lobby or maybe the break room. I see a Glamour, Sports Illustrated, and Newsweek.

  He gives us a hard look before he leaves. “You two try to go anywhere, you can wait in a jail cell. Don’t think I won’t do it. I’ve got better things to do than babysit a couple kids who run away because Mommy and Daddy are meanies.”

  He slams the door, and Tiffany jumps in her seat. Then she starts to cry. Again.

  “Why did you have to do that!” she yells at me through her tears. “You dumbass.”

  “That” is get busted shoplifting.

  Tiffany had dragged me back to the mall. After risking our lives to dash across the street and risking our lives further by eating these horrible wet hot dogs rolling in this machine for who knows how long . . . she talked me back into the mall.

  We couldn’t think of anywhere to go after our brief failed attempt at hitching a ride. I was trying to talk myself into it, thinking we’d be in a warm car, there are two of us, so that was safer. But it’s so snowy I don’t think anyone could see us, or they didn’t want to stop for a couple of school skippers. Plus it was a really busy road—even if someone had decided they wanted to stop, someone who didn’t look like an ax murderer, someone willing to take us south, the roads were so bad they would have caused a pileup.

  When Tiffany said she wanted to go into the mall again for a while, I was so relieved I almost fell down, and I gave up on the hitching idea for good.

  I’ve done a lot of stupid-ass things the last few days, but getting murdered by a psycho was one stupid-ass thing too far. Plus I feel responsible for Tiffany, who, as Mom would put it, is “not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

  So we were back in a different part of the mall, and I said we should look like we’re shopping so it doesn’t look so weird that we’re just walking endless loops. So we went into JCPenney, and Tiffany looked at earrings.

  I saw someone watching us and got worried about getting caught, until I decided that getting caught might not be the worst thing ever.

  I took a pair of earrings and slid them up my sleeve. And when Tiffany was ready to go, we walked out into the mall to the sound of blaring alarms, and that same someone—plainclothes security, it turned out—came to say, “Come with me, please.”

  “No!” Tiffany wailed, and tried to run away.

  I was so embarrassed.

  Tiffany is calling me a dumbass again.

  “I mean, why did you even take the earrings? I didn’t even want some, I was just killing tim
e. I didn’t know I was running away with a thief.”

  This is so ridiculous on so many levels, I don’t bother to answer.

  She tries a new tactic.

  “I thought you loved me.”

  “I thought I did, too.”

  It came out too fast, and too late I realize I should have softened that. She’s wailing again on the table. I come around to her side and put my hand on her arm, but she shakes me off.

  “I’m s-s-sorry. Didn’t mean it.”

  “Yes, you did. And you don’t love me because I’m fat.”

  “No!”

  I look up at the ceiling, trying to organize my thoughts. I don’t like a lot of talking. It’s hard when I’m nervous because I stammer, and I get embarrassed, and it gets worse. That’s why I’m better at writing, and why I like Facebook so much, or really anything on the computer. I’m really fast at typing.

  In my backpack I have a notebook. I always have a notebook because I like to draw, and sometimes I write little poems when I’m bored. So I take out my notebook and start writing.

  I don’t know you very well, is all. I thought we could get to know each other in messages and we’d be close that way. But real life is different. I still care about you lots, but that’s not exactly the same. Please don’t be mad. I just didn’t want you to get hurt trying to hitchhike.

  I shove this across the table to her, nudging her elbow with it. She sniffs and wipes her face, and reads. At first she scowls, but then her face relaxes. She slumps back in her chair, but the waterworks have stopped.

  I pull the notebook back and add this:

  You know we weren’t going to get very far. We had no money, no car. If we hitched, we’d either get a creepy freak, or a good citizen who’d know we were running away and probably turn us in. It was never going to work.

  I underline never for effect.

  And I’m cold. Aren’t you cold?

  I add a little cartoon of our shivering selves.