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I come out of the woods into our backyard. Mitch’s truck is still not here, but a blue Ford is sitting in the driveway instead. I recognize the car; it belongs to my mom’s friend, Faye, whom I have known for years and don’t like. She is the reason Mom ended up in the psych ward the last time. She is the reason I had to redo sixth grade, and I hate her for it. I open the door and slip into the living room, wondering why she has come this morning. The trailer is bustling with activity. My mother is stacking bags beside the door, while Faye and a man loiter in the living room.
It takes me just a minutes for my eyes to adjust to the dimness after being outside. My mother is talking, but what she is saying doesn’t register. The man is hefty with a shock of reddish-brown hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. A real lumberjack man. Mom’s voice finally comes through to me. “Did you hear me? Alison?”
“Huh, I’m sorry, what?” I ask, feeling stupid and slightly dizzy from my descent from the ridge into our shadowed hell.
“Pack some things. We’re getting out of here.”
“Where are we going?”
“Don’t ask me questions. Just get some clothes.” The utter exasperation and annoyance of her tone is like a slap in the face, as if I am the cause of all her turmoil. Her breath hits me, and I know she has been drinking. Her breath is fresh with vodka, not the stale rum and coke that she drinks at the Friday Fires—because vodka doesn’t have a scent, which must be some universal belief held by all drunks and disproved by every other person with a sense of smell. She has a wild look around her eyes, and I know better than to push it, so I hustle down the hall and fill my backpack with underwear and clothes, not mentioning that the trailer is ours and Mitch should leave, not us. I wish he would get here. Maybe he could make this right, either by putting them back together or by moving out himself, but who knows where he has gone. He’s probably gone to Theresa. Faye comes back into my room and sits down on the bed. Suddenly I realize that I am crying again.
“Honey, you okay?”
“Sure. Why not?” As if it were every day that your world comes unhinged, even if it hadn’t been great before. But I’m more upset about seeing Dylan with Kelci than about my mom leaving Mitch—I don’t really care about that one way or the other. It is not like it’s a first. What has me crying is the stumbling, tumbling walk back through the woods, arguing to myself about why I don’t care whom he dates and how I don’t even care about him anyway. Trying to tell myself how I don’t need him and don’t even really want him. It’s just that it’s her. Damnit. But standing here in my room, packing clothes for another run, all I want is have him here, regardless of the awkwardness of our meeting up on Donovan’s Ridge. I need him to be here for me, and he isn’t. I need somebody to be here for me. Why am I not ever enough? The thought echoes in my head, bounding from the grey walls of my brain, transforming from a thought into a memory of my mother’s voice saying the exact same thing.
“You’re going to stay with us for a while, okay?”
“I can’t leave. This is our home. Anyway, I have finals this week.” All the way back from the stupid ridge, I hoped he would overtake me, having left Kelci on the ledge. I wanted him to come for me. What is wrong with me? I’m still packing, even as my mind tells me I am a fool. Such a stupid little fool. Why would he come for me when he had her already? I can’t compete with that.
When I first met Faye, she told me to call her Aunt Faye, which I never have done. She and my mother used to make a big deal about being self-proclaimed sisters. I’ve heard the story of my mother’s life in bits and pieces, stuttered starts and halted stops. I wonder what version of herself she has given Faye.
“Rob works here in town. He’ll bring you.”
I had almost forgotten that we were in a conversation, of sorts, so it draws me up, and I look at her perplexed.
“Who the hell is Rob?” This is insane. I haven’t seen Faye in over a year, and now she’s here telling me that I’m going to stay with her and some guy named Rob is going to bring me to school.
“Honey, he’s my fiancé. He lives with me.” As if this should all be common knowledge. Last I’d heard, she was married to some guy name Johnny. I narrow my eyes and almost ask about Johnny, but I think better of it. Faye is not the most tolerant person I know.
“I don’t want to go.” I’m grabbing things off of my dresser and shelves, whining, and putting them back down in different places. “Why can’t I just stay here?”
“Honey, that just isn’t a good idea.” She says it with strained patience.
“Why not?”
“You can’t just stay here with Mitch. Not alone.” She drops her voice. “You’ve turned into a very pretty girl. Who knows what he might try with your mother not here to protect you?”
“I can take care of myself,” I say, annoyed. Her lowered, conspiratorial tone is infuriating to me. She thinks Mitch would come on to me, and that somehow my self-absorbed, alcohol-addled mother protects me from such. She never protected me from Ed; I can’t imagine she would now. She’d probably kick me out for taking her man. I actually laugh. “Protect me? That’s rich.” I don’t believe “protect Alison” has ever been high on my mother’s rather short list of priorities. Regardless, Faye’s implication, her insult to Mitch, perhaps her close touch on a festered wound that lives in the dark, creepy corners of my soul, resounds deep inside me. All of the frustration and anger I’ve been feeling about everything else comes pounding out of my mouth against this accusation. I throw as much scorn and disgust as I can muster into my voice. “Mitch would never do anything to me. He’s a good person.” I’m not really sure why I am defending him. He is maybe not such a good person, and didn’t I spend half the night last night waiting to hear him hit her? But defend him I do. “You don’t live here. You don’t know him. You don’t know her. You don’t know any of us, Aunt Faye.” I spit my words out with contempt, my tone speaking of the times that I had pulled her down the hall and into her bed because she was passed out on the floor, even though I would never dare utter such things. These are our secrets. Our dirty little secrets. Or the time she got so drunk she threw up in the bathtub and passed out. That was a fun one to clean up. I think of the accusations she has thrown out time and again, and I know that Mitch finds other women. Half of what I say is mumbled, under my breath, a practice I’ve learned from my mother. Contempt and disgust is a language I didn’t even know I had in me, but it tumbles from my lips to poison the already dank air between Faye and me.
I could go on. Making my own accusations, my own judgments, my own injured existence giving me that right, but Faye’s hand slams across my face. I spin into the wall and nearly tumble off my feet. I catch the edge of the dresser and right myself. Nobody has ever hit me before. Nobody. Even with all of the other craziness in my life, I’ve never felt the sting of a slap or a fist, and I stand in dumb silence, my hand holding my cheek, my lips parted with the shock.
“Shut up. Do you hear me?” she hisses at me as she whirls around the bed, her eyes wide and excited. She grabs my elbow and shakes me. “Your mother may let you talk to her like that, but I will not. She has had a tough time of it, and I will not have you making it any harder for her. Do you hear me?” She releases my arms, but her grey eyes, the color of a storm, bore into me, holding me as if chained. The muscles in her jaws twitch. “Now, you get your shit together and shut up.”
I nod my head dumbly. Who would have thunk she would hold such a powerful whop? I pick up my backpack, and she again takes my arm, steering me to the living room, which is now vacant, as Rob and my mother have gone outside to load her things into the car. Faye rushes me down the front steps, with urgency, as if the trailer were set to ignite. I’m bundled in the backseat with my mother. Rob drives, and Faye keeps turning in her seat and reaching back to pat my mother’s knee. I stare out the window as we drive through town on 16. Faye lives just on the west side of Mattoon, in the spoils from her last divorce. She’s had three. No wonder she and my mother understand each other so well.