| |
As Mattie sat in the teacher’s lounge, fuming and imagining all the ways in which the conversation with Jill could have gone differently, the door opened, and in walked the principal, Dr. Alverez.
The temperature in the room dropped three degrees.
Mattie narrowed her eyes as she watched him cross the room to fill his ostentatious blue Yale mug with coffee.
Dr. Alverez was the only person Mattie had ever seen who managed to make argyle sweater vests look intimidating, even when paired with pleated khakis. His stern visage reminded her of the chill she had experienced upon viewing ancient Mayan statues while traveling in Central America.
That’s when it started, she thought. Three months ago, when Miri just quit out of the blue, and Dr. Alvarez took over, and suddenly it was all about the standardized tests. Pretentious, overbearing Dr. Alvarez. I don’t even know that jackass’s first name.
“Ah, Mathilda.” Always so formal – Mattie had repeatedly asked him not to call her ‘Mathilda,’ to no avail. “I trust your day has been productive.”
“Mrmft,” she replied, rolling her eyes.
“No? Well. Perhaps some pop quizzes are in order. Nothing motivates your students like a pop quiz.”
“Nothing makes a student hate you and your material like a pop quiz,” Mattie snapped.
Dr. Alverez raised an eyebrow. “This isn’t a popularity contest. Our goal is to guide and to educate.”
“I would like my students to engage with the material, not just memorize it, thank you very much.”
“Mathilda,” Dr. Alverez lectured. “The aim of our school is to shape these children into productive–”
“What? Productive workhorses? Productive consumers? Productive serfs?” Mattie interrupted. “No. The aim of education should be to give them the tools to think for themselves, to improve society, not just to function within its existing boundaries, and it should certainly not be to mold them into good little brainwashed corporate drones, dammit!”
Mattie stood, her chair clattering to the ground behind her. She left it where it was. “I am going to go sit out in the courtyard. I am in no mood to listen to your–” she stopped herself just in time to substitute a milder word for the one she wanted – “malarkey about teaching for the tests and quelling creative thought.”
Dr. Alverez crossed his arms and leaned back against the hideous pink vinyl countertop that ran along the back wall of the lounge.
“Are you quite finished?” he inquired coldly.
“Yes.” Mattie strode to the door, jerked it open, and twisted back around to glare at her boss again. “And furthermore–“ She stopped abruptly.
Dr. Alverez had his hands held up in front of him and was contorting them in an intricate gesture. Mattie squinted; were his fingers glowing?
The doorknob was suddenly and violently torn from her hand and the door slammed shut. She jumped away from the exit, turning her head back and forth, eyes darting from the door to her boss and back again. “What the hell just happened?” she demanded.
The man had thrust his hands behind his back and his aristocratic face was wearing a suspiciously innocent expression. He schooled his countenance back into his habitual stern frown. “Don’t walk away from me while I’m speaking, please.” Each word was a falling icicle.
Mattie narrowed her eyes. “Do you have some kind of remote system for this door?” She stepped closer to him. “Did you just slam the damn door on me? What is your problem?” She straightened her spine and met his cold eyes. “You know what? Screw this. I am done with this job. I’m tired of your bullshit, and I’m not going to deal with it any longer. I quit! And you know what else? You are a pompous ass, nobody cares that you have a fucking doctorate, and–” Mattie began to run out of steam. “And you dress like a big nerd!” she finished lamely.
“What?” There was a note of panic in Dr. Alverez’s voice that filled Mattie with satisfaction. He wasn’t so unflappable after all.
“You heard me! I’m out of here!”
She was halfway out of the room as he called after her, “Wait, no, you can’t just–”
Mattie began to sprint down the hallway as his voice faded behind her, rushing through the heavy double doors at the end of the hall. She ran out into the sunshine and twirled around and around on the grass.
Dizzy, she pulled out her cell phone and called her sister. It went straight to voicemail, so she left a message.
“Tillie! Call me! I did it! I quit my job! I feel so giddy. I know I shouldn’t. I should feel terrified and regretful, but I just don’t. I have no idea what I’m going to do next, but I don’t care. I’ve been miserable. Anyway, I haven’t talked to you in a few days and I miss you. . . . Call me back!”
Mattie hung up, performed one more celebratory spin, and dashed to her car to drive home.
***
Pulling her apartment door closed behind her, Mattie capered into the living room and danced over to the couch. Setting her purse down, she sank into the soft cushions and closed her eyes, savoring the feeling of being home and carefree mid-day. She opened her eyes and her gaze fell on the forgotten envelope she’d left there the previous evening.
“Ah, yes. What have we here?” She reached for the envelope, tore it open, and unfolded the thin sheet of paper within. She read it, blinked, and then read it again. “What the hell?”
Grabbing her purse, she upended it and fished her phone out of the pile of receipts, loose change, pens, and old grocery lists that fell out.
She cursed as she looked for the property management’s number in her contacts, her litany of complaints growing ever louder and more inventive as she listened to their phone ringing on the other end.
Finally, the ringing was replaced by a chirpy female voice.
“Rob and Knob Property. Can I help you?”
“You can damn well try!” she shouted. “I paid my rent! What is this letter you taped to my door? You’re going to evict me if I don’t pay? I dropped off my check a week early!”
“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to calm down,” gasped the woman on the other end of the line. “Can you give me your name, please?”
“Sorry. I’m sorry.” Mattie took a deep breath and tried to remember that the answerer-of-the-phone was probably not in charge of evictions. “It’s Mathilda Holiday. I’m at 2525 NE Glisan, Apartment 14. Really, it’s 13. You’re not fooling anyone by skipping a number.”
“Thank you, Ms. Holiday. I didn’t personally have any say on whether to include number 13 in our larger buildings, but you are the third person to point that out to me this week, and I will be happy to pass along your comments to management. Now, if you’ll just hold on while I pull up your account. . . . Ah. I see. My records show that your check was declined for insufficient funds.”
“Insuff– What does that mean? I have plenty of funds!”
“It means your check bounced, ma’am. I’m sorry. Maybe you should call your bank? I don’t know what else to tell you. Now that it’s late, we need a cashier’s check for the full amount by this Tuesday, or we will have to evict you. That’s our policy, and there’s nothing I can do. It’s in your lease.”
Mattie’s voice chilled. “I see. Yes, I will call my bank. Thank you. What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t. It’s Barbie.”
“Of course it is.” Mattie punched the End button on her screen with as much force as she could, stubbing her finger slightly. She missed the landline phones of her childhood, when angrily hanging up could be done with real panache.
Taking another deep breath, she scrolled through her apps, logging into her credit union account.
She stared at the negative balance for a full minute. “It’s empty. My bank account is empty. Why is my bank account empty?”
She sat upright. “Craig. It has to be Craig.” She scrolled through her contacts again, hitting Call with a flourish. As it rang, she stood up and began to pace.
It stopped ringing and his jaunty recording came on, “Hey, it’s Craig. If this is Mattie, you can go to hell. Anyone else, leave a message!”
“Why you– I can’t believe you– You know what, asshole? I’m coming down there. You’ve been warned.”
Pulling on an old, well-loved grey hoodie, she scooped her wallet, phone, and a couple of pens back into her purse, leaving the rest of the flotsam scattered on the coffee table.
As she walked down the hallway, she pictured Craig listening to her message and quaking in those stupid duck boots he always wore. The idea cheered her up again, and she began to hum an old Rage Against the Machine tune.
***
Mattie eased her twenty-five-year-old sedan off to the side of the country road, pushing the brake pedal all the way to the floor before it finally lurched to a halt. Pulling out her phone, she called Tillie. It went straight to voicemail again.
“Tillie! Call me back. Craig emptied my bank account and it’s overdrawn and so my rent check bounced and I’m going to get evicted if I can’t pay it, which now I can’t, and I quit my job, which I do not regret, but now I have no money because he stole it, and I’m going to punch him in his damn throat, and what the hell is happening to my life? Call me back – I need you to talk me down!”
She hung up and sat still for a moment, focusing on her breathing and trying to count to ten. But each time she started, she only got as far as three before an image of Craig’s smug face popped into her head, smirking as he exited the bank with bags of cash pulled from her account.
“Uggggggggh!” she bellowed. “I’m gonna lose it!” She stared at the phone, willing it to ring, jumping at the chirp of a text coming through.
“Yes! Finally!” She peered at the notification. It was from her bank, informing her of a low balance and warning of an impending overdraft fee. Why was it that they always waited until a week later to let you know about things like that?
“Golly, thanks!” Mattie aggressively revved her engine and swerved back onto the road, narrowly missing a tattoo-sleeved young woman on a green Vespa scooter.
“Sorry!” she called through her open window, garnering an up-turned middle finger in response. “Okay, maybe I’m not sorry, then.”
She slowed down and pulled into the familiar driveway of her former home. Craig’s car was absent.
“Well, crap. I came all this way for nothing?” She called him again and got the same infuriating, smart-ass recording as before. “Oh, really? I can go to hell?”
Mattie looked around and her eye fell on the field of just-starting-to-bloom sunflowers on the other side of the drive. A grin blossomed across her face, and she pulled a utility knife from her center console and jogged over to the field.
Standing amid the tall stalks, Mattie pried her knife open, stretched out her arm, and spun in a circle, slashing at the plants. This proved an ineffective strategy resulting only in the plants bending back and then smacking her arms, so she bent and began to cut down stems one-by-one. Once she had a good armful of branches and stems, she arranged them on the ground.
Mattie stood back and surveyed her work, a crude but readable, “FUCK YOU.” After a moment of consideration, she returned to the field and cut down one more plant for an exclamation point.
As she finished arranging a huge, open flower just so for the dot, she heard her phone ringing from inside her car. She jogged back to the vehicle and picked it up, hoping to see Tillie’s picture on the screen. Instead, she saw the distinguished African American features of Tillie’s best friend. Her face lit up – it had been forever since she’d talked to Trevor. She hit accept and put the phone to her ear.
“Hi, Trevor. What’s–”
“Have you heard from your sister?” he interrupted.
“What? What’s going on?”
“I haven’t seen or heard from Tillie in three days. Three days, Mattie!” Trevor’s words were coming out way too fast. “I have talked to her every single day of our lives since we were eight years old. Senior year of high school, when she went to Cancun on spring break, she called me every day from a payphone. She also called me every day when she flew out to Portland a few days before I did for your wedding, and those were literally the only two times in our lives we have been separated. This is unprecedented!”
“Hold on, Trevor. Slow down. Start at the beginning. What happened three days ago?” Mattie mentally sorted through her most recent interactions with Tillie, realizing with a start that the past week had held only a series of unanswered calls and texts.
Mattie couldn’t remember when she had last had a successful conversation with her twin.
Trevor took a deep breath. “Okay. Today is Wednesday, right?”
“Right.”
“So on Sunday she came over around 11, and I made brunch, and we had some mimosas, and she got tipsy and said something about a ‘club’ and that she was afraid she had ‘pushed it too far.’ And then she clammed up. Wouldn’t say another word about it and just kept changing the subject until I finally let it go.”
“What club?” interjected Mattie.
“Right? That’s what I said. She wouldn’t tell me. Then, as she was leaving, she brought it up again. And then she said, and I quote, ‘Don’t worry – I’ll sort it out. I won’t have to run.’”
“Run?” Mattie’s knees felt shaky, and she slid into the car, bracing her left hand against the top of the door.
“I know. It was super weird,” Trevor replied. “And then she wouldn’t say anything else. She ran out the door, and got in her Uber and left, and I haven’t heard from her since. Not a fucking peep. You’re sure you don’t know anything about a club?”
Mattie racked her brains. “No, I don’t think she’s ever mentioned it. I assume we’re not talking about a book club or something. What kind of club would she have to run from?”
“I don’t know, but she’s not answering my calls or my texts and she hasn’t been at her condo, and I’m freaking out! How is Tillie in a club that neither of us knows about, that she may or may not be running from?” Trevor’s voice climbed an octave. “Where the hell is she, Mattie?”
“I don’t know! I guess I’ve been kind of wrapped up in my own shit. I have called her a couple of times in the past few days, but she hasn’t responded. And she hasn’t texted me back either. And I noticed last night that she hasn’t watched Netflix in a couple of days. And she knows I’m waiting for her to finish season one, so we can talk about it! Have you called the police?”
“Yes. They were remarkably uninterested in the whereabouts of an only-recently-missing hooker.”
“She’s not a hooker, she’s a–”
“Sex worker,” Trevor interrupted. “I know. I’ve gotten the lecture too. But to the police, she’s a hooker. And apparently, they don’t look for hookers until they’ve been missing for a while. They were pretty dismissive on the phone. I even used my best ‘white guy’ voice, to no avail.”
Mattie snorted. “That was my next suggestion.”
“Matts, I’m scared. What if she’s in real trouble? What if she’s hurt and bleeding or–” His voice cracked. “Dead, and no one cares but us?”
Mattie leaned her head against the peeling steering wheel and closed her eyes. I don’t need this on top of everything else, she thought and immediately felt guilty.
Aloud she said, “Tillie’s tough. And she has good sense and good instincts. She’s going to be okay. But I want to know more about this ‘club.’ Do you think she’s mixed up in some kind of mafia situation? Or doing drugs at a dance club? She’s never done drugs before. Maybe she’s selling drugs?”
“I thought about that. I can’t really see her doing any of those things. Can you?”
“Not drugs. She was always on my case for smoking weed in high school, and that doesn’t even really count. Mafia, though? Maybe. If she thought the reward outweighed the risk, and there was potential for adventure in it. You’ve been to her place?”
“Of course. I looked all over for any hint of where she’s gone. And I spent the night there last night, in case she came home.” Trevor’s voice sounded bleaker and bleaker, and Mattie came to a decision.
“You know what? I’m driving out there. Screw it. I just quit my job, my bank account is empty, this divorce is sucking my soul away, and I’m about to be evicted. Who needs it? I’m coming out there, and we’re going to find my hellion of a sister and whatever sketchy-ass club she’s gotten herself mixed up in.”
“Oh, my God, Mattie, that would be amazing. Thank you! Wait, what happened? You quit your...? You’re being evicted? What is going on with you?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m leaving today. I’ll see you in a few days, okay? You just keep looking around and keep calling the cops.” Without waiting for a response, Mattie hung up the phone, gave her profane greenery another quick, satisfied look, and turned her key, which she had left in the ignition. The engine sputtered for a moment before starting.
“You’re going to have to do better than that, girl,” she said, patting the dashboard. “We’re going to St. Louis!”
***
Mattie struggled to shut the trunk over the three battered suitcases she’d crammed into it. The back seat was full of boxes, and the front passenger seat contained an inverted chair. She’d packed up everything she figured she’d need over the next couple of weeks and a few sentimental items, and left a note for Rob and Knob Property Management:
“Dear assholes,
Your eviction policy sucks goat-ass. I have moved on. Please accept the rest of my belongings and my security deposit in lieu of last month’s rent. Have a nice day.”
With a final heave, Mattie convinced the trunk to latch. She slid into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The motor coughed to life, and she pulled away from the curb without looking back, heading for the freeway.