Loe raamatut: «Followers», lehekülg 5

At Ian’s pre-graduation party, Catherine gulped Mad Dog too fast from a jelly jar with Lion King characters on it. Danny and Orla put her to sleep in the only untrashed room of the house, atop Ian’s parents’ plain navy quilt. Danny sandwiched Catherine between pillows, propping her on her side in case she threw up. When they got back downstairs, the other kids had all passed out or gone home, abandoning the strobe light that sat blinking on a card table. Orla was starving. Danny suggested they go back into town, to Wawa, for hoagies.

When they left the store, bags swinging, Orla thought they would head right back to watch Catherine, but Danny felt like a drive. Orla, sitting in the front seat for once, touched the gearshift and said, “I wish I could drive stick.” She wished no such thing; she couldn’t have cared less. But she was always on the lookout for ways to seem interesting.

Without taking his eyes off the road, Danny had covered her hand with his and left it there as he guided the car through its powers. Orla hadn’t said a thing, hadn’t moved, hadn’t breathed. He was driving too fast, she thought, drifting too close to the yellow line, getting careless on hairpin curves. She had never felt safer in her life.

When they got back, they sat on Ian’s porch, eating and talking. Orla had given Danny a book a few weeks earlier, a whiny teenage manifesto she took as gospel at the time. “I loved it,” he said. “I tried to get Catherine to read it, but I don’t think she got it.” He looked out past the porch rail as if there were a great vista in front of them, though the house across from Ian’s was only thirty feet out. A string of Christmas lights, half-burned-out, still drooped from its eaves. “It’ll be our thing,” Danny said.

Inside, they found Catherine sleeping deeply. Danny felt for her breath with his hand, then crawled into bed beside her. Orla collapsed on the floor, and Danny pulled the pillow from beneath his neck and tossed it down. “Are you gonna remember us, Orla?” he said quietly.

Orla’s heart pounded in her throat as she wondered, briefly, if she had done it all wrong, being brave and pure and wise, if she should withdraw from her fancy mountainside college, or beg him to come along. Like the seventeen-year-old girl she was, she believed him full of potential that was invisible to everyone but her.

“Who’s us?” she said finally.

Danny was half-asleep when he answered. “All of us,” he said. “You know, you’re gonna be somewhere else, you’ll be this writer, and...” He paused, gave a long moan of a yawn. “I’ll be like, ‘I know her.’”

The next morning, after the principal and class president were finished, Orla had to give a speech. She had served as class vice president after running unopposed, at Gayle’s insistence, for the sake of her college applications. Onstage with her speech, a single-spaced printout of metaphors that didn’t quite land, Orla spoke slowly, hoping Danny and Catherine might show up by the end. But their seats were still empty when she finished.

A few hours after graduation, the phone rang at Orla’s house. It was Catherine. Though both girls had cell phones by then, they still called each other’s homes, a habit both formal and intimate, proud proof of their long friendship. Catherine was shaky with guilt. She had been sick from drinking all morning, she said. Then she had gone to the car wash with Danny, to wait with him while he had his car detailed. She had vomited, on the way home from Ian’s, all over the passenger seat.

“Was I awful?” Catherine said. “At the party?”

“Not awful,” Orla said. She drew the word out carefully, as if Catherine had really embarrassed herself and Orla was sparing her the truth.

“I feel terrible I missed your speech.” Catherine’s voice was gaspy in the receiver, the way it got when she was headed for a cry. “Are we okay?”

“Sure,” Orla said. Nothing else. She listened to Catherine’s trembling sighs on the other end, the sound of her waiting for Orla to comfort her. But all she could think of was Catherine puking in Danny’s car, on the seat that had been hers in the middle of the night. She tucked the receiver under her chin and stayed stingily silent.

When Orla hung up, she saw Gayle in her bedroom doorway, holding the lidded plastic tub that would live under Orla’s bed at Lehigh. “You have so much going for you, Orla,” Gayle said. “Let Catherine have what Catherine has.”

Summer drifted past, and Orla made excuses not to see Catherine. They said shallow precollege goodbyes over the phone. Orla hadn’t lied, when Catherine asked; they were okay. She wasn’t angry. She just didn’t see the point of staying close. Her feelings for Danny had been validated—I’ll be like, I know her. He wanted to see how she was going to turn out. No matter where the story went from here, Orla thought, Catherine was destined to be a footnote.

College became the place she started watching him, because college was the place she started being alone. For no reason Orla could see, the girls on her freshman-year dorm floor looked around her as if by agreement. Her roommate mumbled something about a sleeping problem and transferred elsewhere in October, just weeks after she and Orla had agreed, with the rusty manners of two girls who have always had their own rooms, where to put the posters and the minifridge. After the roommate’s furniture was removed, Orla vowed each day to plant her feet in front of one of her hallmates and say, “I have a single now, you know, if you guys want to drink in my room tonight.” But—perhaps because they mostly saw each other while wearing only towels—she never found the bravery.

By the time fall break began, the borders of cliques were bonded and set. Orla could hear groups of friends moving outside the door she no longer kept propped hopefully open, as her orientation counselor had advised. She heard them going to breakfast late without her, going to dinner early without her, going to parties loudly without her. Her aloneness was so random, so total and unprovoked, that she almost thought someone from the school would come along to smooth it out, the way they might a housing mix-up, or a schedule snafu. Just before winter break, she tried to join a sorority, walking into an information session to find two hundred girls in the nearly same black pointed boots, ink-blue jeans, and tartan scarves. Only one other girl in the room was not wearing some version of this look: a girl from India whom Orla recognized from her discrete math class. An eager blonde who had been talking to the Indian girl, enunciating loudly, turned to Orla when she sat down. She assessed Orla’s Lehigh hoodie and sky blue denim, the plastic claw in her hair. “And what country are you from?” the blonde said loudly.

By spring, Orla was leaning into isolation. She sold her meal plan on the student exchange website and took to eating buffalo wings in her room. She worked her way through Sex and the City on DVD. She wrote: short stories, song lyrics, never-ending screenplays. And, as more and more ways to do it were invented, she kept up with Danny. She would write for four minutes, then refresh Danny’s Myspace. She would falter on a passage, then toggle over to stare at his screen name on her Instant Messenger buddy list, watching the letters go from black to gray when he found something better to do.

The semesters turned into the next ones, and nothing changed. Once, Orla saw the Indian girl from the sorority meeting in the student union. She walked toward the girl, an opener gathering itself in her mind—Remember that night, how crazy was that, like was there a Burberry memo we missed? But as she got closer, a harried redhead ran up and punched the arm of the Indian girl. They found a table and unzipped their jackets. Orla saw that the Indian girl had on the right scarf, the right jeans and boots. And a crew-necked sweatshirt with Greek letters, denoting Alpha Phi.

When she went home on breaks, Orla would sometimes glance up at the ring of her parents’ landline. But, after a school year’s worth of silence, Catherine had started to text her. She would send Orla canned messages on holidays—happy this or that, and hi to your parents—and each girl would ask how the other had been. What could really be said that way? Twice, Orla snuffed out an exchange by saying, with a smiley, “Nothing new to report!” Facebook had not yet reached Catherine’s lower-tier state school, but Orla didn’t need it; she could picture how well her friend had moved on. She imagined Catherine’s soccer teammates with tight stomachs and clean faces, fussing over Danny the first time he came to visit. She imagined them teasing Catherine about being a lightweight, and putting her gently to bed when she proved them right. There was only one thing she really wondered about her old friend: how long she and Danny would be together.

She got the answer she wanted a few weeks after college graduation. Orla moved straight back to Mifflin, to make good on a deal she had struck with her parents: she would live at home and work locally for one year, to save money before moving to New York. She had secured a job covering town council meetings for the newspaper that fell on Mifflin’s doorsteps.

One night, a week before she was due to start at the paper, Orla ran into Catherine while picking up takeout at TGI Fridays. (Jerry was fond of saying that the chain’s Jack Daniel’s chicken was the best dinner on earth, that “you”—who “you” was had never quite been defined—“can keep your Michelin-star joints.”) When their eyes met, Orla was holding her father’s credit card, and Catherine was holding a drink with a flashing scrotum plunged into the ice.

“It’s my bachelorette party!” she crowed, grabbing Orla’s elbow to anchor herself. “Danny and I are getting married next month.” Her eyes widened and she dug her fingers into Orla’s arm. “Stay!” she pleaded. “Hang out.” Orla phoned home, hoping for an out, but Gayle joyfully insisted that Orla forget about bringing home the food and enjoy herself.

Catherine’s soccer friends—there were three of them—looked exactly as Orla had envisioned. They were bright and healthy, sculpted muscle covered in skin that was somehow tanned and freckled at once. They all had hair that looked like it was only worn down on special nights like this—too long, too limp, and vaguely damp-seeming, but somehow on the whole not unappealing. Catherine fit with them perfectly, Orla thought, though it was her old friend who, for once, had a good haircut. Catherine’s braid was gone, replaced by a pretty bob, the golden ends of which twisted into her mouth as she spoke.

“This is Orla,” Catherine said, and Orla didn’t miss what happened next. The friends’ eyes narrowed at the mention of her name. They looked at each other. They straightened. It was obvious: they had heard, at an earlier time, a memorable explanation of who she was.

Orla took her penis straw. She endured the torrent of inside jokes. She was careful not to let anyone catch her looking at the clock. Catherine more or less ignored her for the rest of the night, until it finally ended and the bossiest of the soccer girls jingled her keys. “Okay,” she said to Catherine, taking the drink right out of her hand. “Let’s get you home.”

Catherine shook her head. “It’s out of your way,” she said. “Orla will take me.”

Orla had her car from high school—the boxy, cat-eyed Taurus. She watched as Catherine popped open the glove compartment, an automatic reflex, and pulled out the little book of Orla’s old burned CDs. “The one with the Incubus,” she slurred, rifling.

“I forgot those were in there,” Orla said. She was surprised to find herself suddenly on the edge of tears, and grateful that Catherine seemed too drunk to notice, her index finger swaying as she pointed out the turns.

The house was a small brick Cape with white metal awnings over the windows and a black horse and buggy embedded in the screen door. “Wait here a minute,” Catherine said. She got out of the car and stomped toward the house, missing every bluestone paver in the path. Mulch splintered upward as her heels sank into the earth. The concrete stoop’s metal railing wobbled as she gripped it.

He’s in there, Orla was thinking, her eyes on the front window. Danny is in there.

And then she saw him, rising from the couch opposite the window to answer Catherine’s knocks. He rubbed his eyes as he ambled across the room. The light was behind him; all Orla saw was his outline, the shadows of his features. He opened the door and looked out through the screen, but Catherine prodded him back as she pushed inside the house and pulled the door shut behind her. Orla gripped the wheel. Was she still supposed to wait?

A minute later, Catherine reappeared. She stumbled back toward the car. In her hand was an envelope, rimmed in black-and-white damask. She got back in the car and thrust it at Orla. Orla clicked on the overhead light and disassembled it quickly. The card she pulled out began: “Together with our families, Daniel and Catherine...”

“Oh,” she said. “Catherine, that’s—You don’t have to.” She tilted the wedding invitation. Even in the dim light, she could see that the words were slightly askew, cocked toward the top right corner of the card. Catherine must have printed these herself. The lump in Orla’s throat grew, and she realized suddenly why it was there: she did not want to go to this wedding, she did not intend to go to this wedding. But the gesture overwhelmed her; she had been so cruel, and Catherine was being so nice to her. At least, that was what she thought until Catherine started speaking again. Her voice was suddenly so intense, so oddly charged, that Orla looked up, as startled as if she had screamed.

“You were at the bachelorette party,” Catherine said, “so it’s only proper you’re invited.” Orla watched as she opened the glove compartment again and began to rummage through it. After a moment, she found what she was looking for—a pen—and handed it to Orla point first, stabbing the small glinting end at her palm. She nodded at the invitation. “Just pick your entrée now,” she said. “Save you the stamp.”

Orla swallowed and looked toward the house. The couch was vacant now, the room surrounding it dark.

“He’s not coming out,” Catherine said. She lifted her arm to the edge of the car door and rested it there, where the window was all the way down. She dragged her nails back and forth on the vinyl. She smiled at Orla—a knowing smile. “He’s not coming out to see you.”

The lump in Orla’s throat dried up, chased away by a settling calm. She felt the same way she did when she sat down to an exam she was well prepared for. Whatever theory Catherine had, right or wrong, was just that: a theory, lacking evidence. Orla had been so careful not to create any evidence, and she was not going to stammer.

She looked at Catherine. “Of course he’s not,” she said evenly. “It’s late.” She looked down at the invitation and scratched her finger over the date. “I’m not sure I can make it, actually.”

Catherine cut her off with a laugh. She clapped a hand to her mouth, like she hadn’t meant to let the sound out, then dropped it and giggled again. “But where would you be?” she said. “I know you always thought you’d be somewhere else, but you’re here. You’re around.” She grabbed the card back, then the pen. She clicked its point in and out, in and out. “Chicken or steak, Orla?”

“I’ll have to check the date,” Orla said.

Catherine snorted. She made a violent X next to the steak option. She got out and slammed the door, leaned down near the open window. “I’m glad you’re coming, Orla,” she said. “I think it’s important you be there to see this.”

But Orla wasn’t there to see it. The Monday after she ran into Catherine, she emailed the newspaper editor who was meant to be her boss. Something had come up, she explained. Something undeniable. Gayle was apoplectic about Orla reneging on the offer; she left the editor her own rambling voice mail, spelling her full name and saying that she had raised her daughter better than this.

A week later, Orla agreed to sublet a room that didn’t exist yet from a girl named Jeannette in Chelsea. Jeannette explained it over and over: the place was a one-bedroom, and she’d wanted to live there alone, but she found she couldn’t afford it and needed someone else to chip in. Did Orla understand—she would have to put up a wall in the living room to box off some space for herself. Orla said she got it, she didn’t mind, and yes, she understood: the cost of the wall was hers to bear.

On the morning of Catherine and Danny’s wedding, Orla and Jerry set out in a U-Haul for Manhattan. Orla waited to call the bride until the skyline was close enough to touch, mirror gray on her right as the rented truck rumbled toward Jersey City. She told Catherine the same thing she told her parents: she’d gotten a job at a website. Soon enough it would be true—within months, she would find the job that would turn into the job that turned into Lady-ish. But just at that moment, it was a lie. Orla had funded the check for Jeannette by cashing in all her old savings bonds, the brittle peach stubs given by grandparents and godparents on the milestone days of her premillennium childhood: baptism, birthdays, eighth-grade graduation. “These haven’t fully matured yet,” the bank clerk warned Orla, “if you want to wait.” Orla didn’t want to wait. She asked for all of it in cash.

Let Catherine have what Catherine has, her mother had said years ago. But wasn’t that exactly what Orla had been doing? She was letting Catherine have Danny until Orla became the person he predicted. And that was who she would become, she resolved: the person Danny thought she could be, not the one Catherine thought she was. She would be damned if she turned out to be someone Catherine could laugh at from down the road. She would be damned if she turned out to be around.

“This is really late notice,” Catherine said when Orla called to say she couldn’t make the wedding. Orla could hear the hot hiss of a hair straightener working on the other end. “We paid twenty-six dollars a head,” Catherine added.

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” Orla said. “I had to take the move-in slot the building gave me. They’re really strict about this stuff in New York.”

Orla never spoke to Catherine again, but she saw her plenty while she kept watching Danny, just as she had all through college. She wore out screens and acquired new ones, and all the time—though countless new ways to reach him bloomed around her—she only watched. She watched as he started balding and managing a cold-storage locker one town over. She watched as Catherine put on weight, her athletic figure retaining its contours but not its firmness, and started selling three-step skin care systems. She watched as the newlyweds renounced carbs and started traveling with friends from the gym, and she watched as they got sick of all that and started a blog about Catherine’s slow-cooker shortcuts and Danny’s home repairs. Orla didn’t like a bit of their marriage, not online and not in real life. But she was curiously undeterred. She understood now, in a way that she hadn’t in college, that waiting for him was just part of her life. That she would never really stop. When people bumped her on the street without seeming to see her at all, she brushed it off with the thought: Someone is waiting to brag that he knows me.

So it wasn’t buried quite as deep as the back of her mind, the notion that maybe this business with Floss would prop her up at a height Danny couldn’t ignore. Somewhere he could find her easily, and see that, all along, he’d been right.

CHAPTER SIX

Marlow