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When I get to the nursery I’m happy to see that Tyler’s car is still there. The tools and empty pots have been unloaded from the truck bed, but no one seems to be around. They’ve got to be here somewhere, though. I park next to Tyler’s car and walk through rows of plants. There is a bright security light out front, but I can barely see where I’m going here in the dark. It is dead quiet.
“Tyler!” I yell.
No answer. Where can they be? I hear a car on the street and wonder if it’s the red Honda. I walk faster. Maybe they’re using the phone or something. I’m almost running now, to the old office where I see a dim light.
I stop at the window, cup my hands and look inside. I can barely see, but I see too much.
Shawna is on her back, on the ratty couch, with Tyler on top. His bare butt shows white in the faint light. His jeans are down around his thighs. An empty foil condom wrapper lies crumpled on the floor. I am frozen at the window, wanting not to look, unable to turn away. Shawna’s bare legs are wrapped around Tyler’s ankles and he is pushing, pushing, pushing until the spell is broken by his groan of pleasure. The sound no one else was supposed to hear.
“No!” I scream. “No! No!”
Tyler looks up quickly, startled, and I turn and run. I jump into the car, slam it into reverse, peel backward, slam it into drive and spin gravel to the gate.
“LAUREN!” I hear Tyler’s frantic call, and press harder on the accelerator.
In my mirror I see him standing in the driveway, holding his unfastened pants up with one hand and waving frantically with the other. I know he is yelling at the top of his lungs, but the sound of my pushed-to-the-limit engine drowns him out.
Tears stream down my face.
“No! No! Why? Why?”
I yell all the way home, to no one, and turn into the driveway without slowing. I jam on the brakes and squeal to a stop, inches from the closed garage door. I run into the back door and collide with Grams, who is rushing to meet me.
“What is it?” she asks. “The red car—was he chasing you? I’m calling Dennis right now.”
“No, it’s not that,” I manage to gasp.
I squeeze past Grams and run into my bedroom, my safe place, and flop face down on the bed.
Grams follows right behind. “What is it? What is it?”
I shake my head, sobbing.
“Did you see the red car?”
I shake my head.
“Were you in an accident? Is someone hurt?”
I shake my head again, heaving so hard with sobs it seems I could break apart. Grams gives my shoulders a shake.
“Lauren, you’ve got to talk to me! I can’t help you if you won’t talk!”
But I know she can’t help anyway, and I can’t talk. I can’t put words to it. I can only cry. And cry. And cry.
––––––––
Grams sits on my bed next to me for a long time, rubbing my back. Finally, my sobs subside.
“Can I get you anything? A cup of tea, maybe?”
I shake my head.
“Well, I think I could use a cup of tea,” Grams says.
When she’s gone, I turn over and look around my room. It’s strange, how the whole world can change but things still look the same. I yank off the promise ring and throw it against the window. It bounces off the glass and lands on my desk. I turn my face to the wall and curl up, tight. I don’t want to feel. I don’t want to think.
“Lauren? . . . Lauren?” My grandmother is calling to me. It sounds as if she’s calling from a distance, even though she is sitting on my bed and rubbing my back.
“Tyler’s here. He wants to see you.”
“No!”
“He’s upset.”
“No!!” I say, trying to curl tighter, into a smaller ball.
I hear mumbling in the other room but I make myself not hear. I don’t want to hear words—especially not Tyler’s words. I concentrate on hearing my own breathing, sensing the emptiness within me.
Sometime late, when there are no traffic noises in the distance, Grams comes into my room. I pretend to be asleep. She puts her gentle, cool hand on my forehead, as if I might have a fever. What I have, though, is the opposite of a fever. There is no warmth in me now, only a deep, silent, chill.
Grams leaves, and I breathe, empty, through the night. Mostly I’m in a place without thought, but sometimes a question breaks through. Why? What happened? How did he stop loving me so fast? And with Shawna??? Mark was right when he called her a dog. Doggie Shawna. How could Tyler do that to me?
I open my eyes with the early morning light. Except for the ring at the edge of my desk, taunting me, everything still looks the same—my same, safe room. The ring can stay right where it is, a reminder that there are no true promises. I learned that a long time ago, when Marcia promised to make a life for us when she got out of prison. All those broken promises written on prison-issue lined paper. There are no true promises. I forgot that for a while, with Tyler. I won’t forget again.
Grams comes in early in the morning.
“I want to talk with you before you go to school,” she says.
“I’m not going to school.”
“Are you sick?”
“Yes.”
I am sick at the thought of walking into creative writing and sitting next to Shawna and Tyler in our Habitat group, as if nothing has happened. I am sick at the thought of seeing them in class, and worse, of seeing them in my mind together, and hearing his moan of pleasure.
I am sick.
Grams leaves and comes back with a cup of tea for each of us. She sets mine on my bedside table, then sits in my desk chair, facing me. She picks up the “promise” ring, then sets it down.
“I don’t know what’s upset you so,” Grams says. “I know it has something to do with Tyler, and I know he’s plenty upset, too.”
She takes a sip of tea and sits watching me. I keep my eye on the bird feeder outside the window, somewhere over and beyond Grams’ right shoulder.
“Talking might help,” she says.
“It won’t.”
“You might be surprised.”
I’ve already been surprised, I think. I don’t want to talk about it. I turn back with my face to the wall. For a while I hear Grams taking sips of tea. Then, eventually, she sighs and leaves the room.
––––––––
Sometime when the sun is shining softly on the pansies in the flower bed outside my window, I hear Grams on the phone.
“No. I’m sorry, I can’t be there today . . . My granddaughter is ill . . . Well, you’ll just have to find a substitute for the substitute I guess.”
Later in the morning Grams comes to my door to offer soft-boiled eggs, which is what I always used to eat when I was sick.
“No, thanks.”
She feels my forehead again. “No fever. But maybe I should call Dr. Lee, anyway.”
“No,” I say.
She gives me one of those long, appraising looks, then walks back out to the kitchen. I hear her fussing around out there as I drift back to my breathing, thoughtless state.
––––––––
Afternoon, I hear the murmur of voices in the kitchen and rouse myself enough to listen a bit. It is Grams’ friend, Betty.
“Do you know what has her so spooked?”
“Love, I think, but I’m not sure.”
“What a mess of things the creator made when she set women up with that love-need.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure about that,” Grams says. “There’s lots that’s wonderful there. Lots of pleasure.”
“Lots of pain,” Betty says.
I’m on Betty’s side with this one.
“Thanks for picking this up for me, Betty. Maybe it’s silly, but I didn’t want to leave Lauren alone and go off on errands.”
“No trouble,” Betty says. “I got you the same kind I’ve got, so I can help you set it up.”
I hear them tearing a carton apart and realize Grams is following her sheriff friend’s advice about an answering machine. Yesterday that would have made me so happy, because it would have meant I’d always know when Tyler called, even if no one was home. Today? Rip the phone out for all I care.
After Betty leaves, Grams suggests I come out and see the machine, and she’ll show me how it works.
“No thanks,” I say, which is also what I say later, when she asks if I want dinner, and later still, when she tells me Amber’s on the phone and asks if I want to talk to her. It’s the same answer I’ve given each time Tyler’s called today. No thanks. I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to think about him. I don’t want to see him with Shawna, over and over again, in my head, a constantly repeating scene set in the nursery office.
––––––––
Late in the evening, after Grams shuts off the evening news, I hear her walking down the hall toward my room. I turn my face to the wall, again pretending sleep. Grams opens the door and walks to the side of my bed. I guess she thinks I’m sick enough, or weird enough, that knocking is no longer appropriate. I don’t stir. I can feel her looking down on me. She nudges my shoulder.
“Lauren?”
I don’t respond.
She nudges again, more insistently.
“Lauren!”
“What?” I mumble.
“Listen, Lauren. You haven’t eaten all day. You’re still in the same clothes you were in when you came home last night. I know something awful must have happened, but I don’t know what. You’ve either got to talk with me about it, or you’ve got to work to get past it. You can’t have another day like today. If you’re not up in the morning and eating a little breakfast, you’re going to the doctor,” Grams says, then walks out, closing the door behind her.
I’m sorry if I’ve worried her, or made her mad. I just don’t know how to be anymore. I don’t know how to be in the world, with the image of Tyler and Shawna always there, right behind my eyes. I don’t see how I can possibly get out of bed in the morning, or eat anything. I’ve got to stay here, in my room, tucked away, where I’m safe.