Crazy Love You (40 page)

And then that was it. I walked out the front door.

Megan picked me up in the Scout. I could tell that she was nervous, she was chattering away. After we'd driven a mile or so, I put my hand on her arm.

“It's okay,” I said. “It's going to be okay.”

She pulled the car over to the side of the road and started to cry, just these big, body-racking sobs. I held her, buried my face in her hair.

We'd never talked about the night of the fire. We'd talked about everything else, our relationship, what she wanted, what I wanted. We'd talked about the baby, about parenthood and everything we dreamed of and feared about it. But those last few days before I wound up in rehab, and everyone wanted to blame everything that happened on my addictions—we'd never talked about that. It kind of felt like talking about someone who wasn't here anymore, the Ian who was addicted to pills and hallucinating big chunks of his life.

We just sat there like that, on the side of the road. The trees were gold, orange, and brown, falling leaves dancing across the road.

“That day in the park?” she said finally. She wiped her eyes.

“Yeah.” I'd always been afraid to ask her about it, what I'd said to her that made her look so shocked and afraid. I honestly didn't know.

“It wasn't you.”

“No,” I said. “I was totally screwed up, taking a bunch of different pills. I was someone else all together.”

In rehab, we learned about separating the real person from the drugs, how when you're dealing with an addict, it's really the substance that's doing the talking. It's like a possession—the booze or the drugs or whatever has snaked its way in and taken hold of the addict, is holding him in its grasp. Or a haunting. Always felt like a bit of a cop-out to me. But what did I know?

She shook her head. That pink diamond glittered on her hand, catching the sun. I noticed, for the first time during her pregnancy, dark circles under eyes.

“That's not what I mean.”

She ran a hand through her hair. I wondered, not for the first time, why she would stay with me, why she loved me. I thought about what Binky said, how they'd unwittingly raised her to be a fixer and a caretaker. Was that why she stayed? Because I fulfilled some deep need within her that she didn't even know she had?

“I mean, it didn't even
look
like you. Your voice. It was
different
.”

I reached for her hands and held them, but I didn't know what to say. I had made a promise to myself to always treat her tenderly, to always take care of her. I was going to do that, whatever the reason she'd chosen to stay with me. I was going to be a better man. I kept saying this over and over to myself, like a prayer.

“You said, ‘You belong to us now. Try to leave me and I'll kill you both.' ”

I blew out a breath, as if I'd been punched in the gut. “I'm sorry. I'd never hurt you. You know that.”

“I do know that,” she said. “It wasn't you. But it wasn't the pills either.”

She'd figured it out. I could see that look on her face—the trepidation and doubt when you've discovered that the answer to a question doesn't make sense in the real world.

“When you called me later, it
was
you. I heard your real voice and I could feel how frightened and alone you were. I didn't understand what was happening to you, but I came to get you. I took the train to The Hollows and a cab from the station. But when I got to the house, you weren't there. So I went inside to wait.”

She took a breath here, seemed to think about how to go on. I imagined her walking into the cold, dark house, calling my name.

“I walked around the house, saw all your stuff. Finally, I was so tired that I just lay down on your bed. I hadn't slept. I hadn't spoken to my parents since you saw my dad in Madison Square Park.”

She wore a deep frown. “I was mad at them. I know they were just scared, but they were bullying me, trying to get me to come back out to Long Island, and I just needed to think. So I hadn't talked to them. They'd been calling. I didn't imagine that they'd be worried enough to call the police.”

Poor Binky and Julia, such good parents and such good people. Some folks just don't know when to stop parenting, though.

“So I guess I just drifted off. But when I woke up there was a little girl standing in the doorway.”

She sounded incredulous, and I imagined Priss standing there with that look on her face, that innocence, that sweetness.

“She was so pretty, and small, and she looked so afraid,” Meg said. “I thought I was dreaming. ‘Who are you?' I asked. She said, ‘I'm Priss.' But, of course, I already knew that. I recognized her from your books and all the old sketches you showed me from when you were younger. I wasn't afraid. I should have been, but I wasn't. ‘What do you want?' I asked her.”

She stopped and sought out my eyes. “Does this sound crazy? Am I crazy?”

“No,” I said. “I know how it is with her.”

“She came nearer to me, and somehow she showed me things. I saw you—a younger you—setting fires, playing with her in the woods, making love to her. She was always different—first a child, then a teenager, then a woman. She grew with you. Then I saw you in the subway station. Except somehow it wasn't you; it was her.”

She had a dreamy, faraway look as she spoke. I could see it all playing out before my eyes.

“She left the room, and I followed. Down the stairs, through the house, and into the kitchen.”

Megan went on.

“ ‘He belongs to me and to this place,' she said. ‘He can't leave. And neither can you.'

“But she was crying; she was so sad and so lonely, and I could feel that loneliness inside me. It was a million years old. And I realized then what she wanted. She just didn't want to be alone anymore.

“ ‘It's okay,' I told her. ‘We'll stay.' ”

When I didn't say anything, Meg kept going.

“She smiled at me and I moved toward her. I wanted to comfort her, to hold on to her. Somehow I was thinking about you, and my poor brother, and your sister, and our baby. There was something wide open in me, willing to take her in. She was just another lost thing.

“But I didn't understand that she wasn't really, physically there. And in that weird dream state, I didn't see the cellar stairs behind her. And then I was falling and falling. And I don't remember anything after that until you came to get me.”

The wind was picking up outside and a car sped past us, startling us both. Megan seemed to come back to herself, and then she started driving again. I knew where we were headed before she turned onto the back road, and then onto the long narrow path that led to the house.

As we pulled up the drive I saw that the house was gone. And farther along I saw the construction site, a bustle of activity, trucks parked and men wearing hard hats and carrying tools and two-by-fours. The foreman, a muscular young guy, gave Megan a wave and she waved back. He looked tan and healthy, smiled a little too broadly at my pretty wife. I shot a quick glance at myself in the sideview. I was pasty- and fatigued-looking. Maybe I could start working out again—sooner rather than later.

“I thought you would want to see it,” she said.

We both climbed out of the car, and I walked around to lean on the hood of the Scout. King of all I surveyed.

They'd cleared away some of the trees to set the house back farther on the property. I could see that they had filled in the old foundation and etched out the shape of the circular drive, scattered some grass seed.

“I didn't want to talk about it while you were still in there,” she said. “I didn't want to undermine what they were trying to do for you.”

I looked into those deep, dark eyes. She had it, too, whatever I had that left me open to Priss. Some darkness, or some deep intuition—whatever it was, there was a doorway in both of us. I didn't think it could be closed.

“I know you have a drug problem, a bad one,” she said. “But I also know it was something more. I saw her. I felt her.”

What a relief it was to be known, to be understood, to be forgiven—to no longer be alone in this place. That, more than love, is what we all want, I think. That, I knew, was what Priss wanted.

“You made her a promise,” I said.

“So did I.”

I heard the Whispers then, and I saw Megan's gaze dart toward the trees. She turned back to me.

“Want to take a walk?” I asked.

“Maybe you should go alone,” she said.

•  •  •

The house that wasn't there
really
wasn't there now. The old foundation had been cleared and the ground filled in with fresh black dirt. It looked like a grave, and I barely paused there on my way to the little church.
Stay away from the places and people that got you into trouble before.
I remembered that first night so long ago very clearly. I was sad and alone, angry at my mother for loving Ella so much that I felt left out. That's what left me vulnerable to Priss. Just like my mother, whose grief opened the door for her.

Negative energy adheres to other negative energy.
That's what Eloise had said. My anger only grew and grew, turning to an ugly, violent rage. I was fuel for Priss's fire, and she was fuel for mine. I kept waiting for her to drop into step beside me, but she didn't.

I came to the church finally and saw that a great deal had been accomplished already. The grounds had been cleared of all the weeds and brush and overgrowth. The tilting, rusted-out old fence had been torn away. The gravestones had been straightened and stood in neat little rows. Leaves had fallen from the trees all around, forming a damp, golden blanket that glinted in the high afternoon sun. The church had been cordoned off with yellow tape tied between posts. A sign read
STRUCTURE UNSOUND. STAY AWAY.

The tape flapped in the breeze, making a tapping sound that mingled with the Whispers and the calling of the birds high in the trees.

When Priss had leaned into me that last night, she didn't tell me what she wanted. She didn't utter the words. She inhabited me, as she'd done many times before. And I knew.

I was the first person to ever ask her what she wanted. Priscilla Miller the girl was powerless, a child who fell victim to circumstance. She was utterly helpless, like all children. The worst possible things that could happen to a child happened to her. They destroyed her. And her rage and sadness adhered her to this place, which had an energy of its own. It was buried here in fertile ground and it grew like a planted seed, though her memory was badly neglected.

She wanted me to tell her story, and I did that in the final installment of
Fatboy and Priss
. The world, or my small part of it, will know Priscilla Miller and how she was wronged.

She wanted me to see her and know her, and acknowledge her. But she also wanted me to forgive her. It was me who did many (but not all) of those awful things—who started fires, and raged, and got into bar fights, and stole pills from my dealer. And yet, it wasn't. My relationship to Priss is something that I cannot explain. We have held each other in comfort, and we have held each other back. Like any haunting, like any addiction, it is a relationship, deep and complicated, and so personal.

I walked over to her grave and let my fingers touch the cool stone.

Love lets go.
That's what Eloise had said. But it wasn't true—not for Priss and me. She didn't want me to let go, and I did not want to. I wanted to be free from rage and sorrow and addiction. And so did she. But she did not want to be alone, here in this place. And I wouldn't leave her. We will stay.

That afternoon, I repeated the promises that I made to her in the burning house. I wanted her to know that I would stay. And even though I didn't see her, I knew she heard me. I know because the Whispers went quiet with a soft sigh. Everybody got what they wanted. Then I went back to my wife and my child.

Maybe you think I'm crazy, that my brain was addled by addiction, that poor Megan was just a pathetic enabler, fostering my delusions. And maybe you're right. It's certainly easier to think so.

But there is one thing I know for sure. And nothing—not therapy, not sobriety, not sanity—can convince me otherwise. Whoever she was, whatever she was, Priss was real.

When I saw her after that day—once the house was built and the church restoration had been completed—she was just a trick of light through the trees. She was a fairy, a wood sprite, bound to this place for reasons she couldn't understand but didn't mind anymore. Just like me.

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