Alder squinched up her face and shrugged. As they walked through the parking lot toward the car, Alder muttered suddenly, “God, this place is depressing. Look at it—it’s just a wasteland of dirty asphalt.”
She had a point. The shops inside the mall were saturated with color and enticing images. By comparison, the parking lot was dismal and smelled of exhaust. “You’re right,” Dana said, unlocking the minivan. “Most people wouldn’t notice, but you—you’re a noticer.”
“Wish I wasn’t.” She heaved a long sigh, letting the air hiss through her lips. “And now you’re going to ask what’s wrong, because I’m acting like a cranky two-year-old. But I can’t stop. You know, when you’re being an idiot—you
know
it, but you can’t stop? There should be a button on the side of our heads like they have on hair-dryer plugs.”
“A reset button?”
“Yeah, and if you knew you were doing it but you couldn’t, like, reach or something, your friend could push the button for you and save you from your own stupidity.”
“I could probably use one of those,” Dana mused. “I bet that would come in very handy.” She pulled out onto Buckland Street. “So, um . . . anything in particular bothering you?”
Alder shrugged. “Where are we going?”
“Just a quick detour.” Dana thought keeping Alder in the car a little longer might help to draw her out. She turned onto Tolland Turnpike and headed toward a park she knew of.
Alder pulled her legs up and crossed them on the seat. She didn’t say anything for a while, until she muttered, “I don’t want to go home for Thanksgiving.”
Thanksgiving?
Dana hadn’t thought that far ahead, though it was only two weeks away. “Why not?” she asked.
Alder let out another hiss of a sigh. “Because E . . . Ethan will be back from college.”
“Are you worried about seeing him?”
“I guess.” Alder uncrossed her legs and set her feet down, then recrossed them back up on the seat. “Or not seeing him.”
Dana nodded. “So you don’t want to see him, but if you’re both home, he might try to call you again. Or”—she shot a quick glance at Alder—“maybe you’re worried he
won’t
try to call.” She turned onto a side road. “Because maybe he’s over it. And you’re not yet.”
Alder’s lip trembled, and a tear leaked out of the corner of her eye. “Did you ever hate somebody so much you wanted to kill
yourself
?” she breathed.
Dana pulled in to a small dirt parking lot by the side of the road. “Alder, honey. You don’t have to tell me what happened—but I hope you’ve told someone.”
Alder shook her head, and the tear flung itself off her chin and onto her sweatshirt. Dana reached out and ran her knuckles over the wet cheek. “It seems like a lot for one person to hold on to all by herself,” she said. “Might feel better if you had some help.”
Alder said nothing. Tears flew down her face faster now, and Dana let her hand rest on Alder’s shoulder, waiting for her to be cried out enough to talk.
As she waited, Dana mused about the disastrous ending to her own high-school romance. She had dated Jim Cain her senior year, but they’d broken up that summer, agreeing that long-distance relationships never worked out. Dana had been relieved. She couldn’t wait to get to UConn and be a whole new person, a person of her own making, whose mother didn’t exhale clichés with the smoke from her Marlboro Lights, whose sister didn’t think the entire world was intractably inane, and whose father wasn’t . . . gone.
There had been a giant party at Chuck Traveleski’s house that last weekend before everyone left for college, and Chuck had come up to her and said, “I always wanted to kiss you, but I never had the’nads to ask.” He had greasy red hair that he combed straight forward into his eyes. But he was a generally nice guy and had been kind enough to risk his parents’ property and wrath by hosting the most unpredictable party of their young lives. How could she say no?
You’d never go against the host,
Morgan had said. And maybe she was right, because Dana had allowed it. But Chuck’s kiss went on too long, as if he’d figured out how to start the procedure but never considered how to end it.
Ex-boyfriend Jim had provided some help in that area. He pulled Chuck off her and attempted to punch him but was too drunk to do more than push poor Chuck onto the ground. Then he turned to Dana with his face screwed up into a horrible grimace of rage and tears, and screamed, “YOU BROKE MY HEART!” He’d ripped open the front of his lime green Lacoste shirt and wailed, “See? It’s BROKEN!”
Dana had spent the remainder of the evening conferring with her girlfriends about getting back together with Jim for just one night, apologizing to Chuck, and meeting with Jim’s emissaries, who were just as drunk as he was. Eventually they all went home and didn’t see each other again until Thanksgiving, by which time it didn’t matter in the least. They were college students. They barely recognized themselves or each other.
Dana peered at Alder, still crumpled and staring through the windshield, tears dripping slower now. “Should we go back to the house?” Dana whispered. Alder shook her head no. Dana slid her hand from Alder’s shoulder down to her wrist. She took Alder’s hand in her own, and Alder squeezed back. They would continue to wait.
Dana gazed out to the stand of pine trees just beyond the parking area. There were wooden picnic tables slightly misshapen by the beginning stages of rot. She and Kenneth had brought the kids here from time to time to eat sandwiches and feed the ducks that lived in the shallows of the adjacent stream.
Kenneth,
she thought.
He was the only one who broke my heart.
She’d dated after college, but no one she’d felt that strongly about until she met Kenneth. He’d had the whole package: smart, handsome, gainfully employed, not living with his parents, funny but also serious. Serious at the right times, like when they’d been dating for two and a half years and it was time, as her mother had so unceremoniously told her, to “fish or cut bait.”
And so they’d gotten married, and moved to a pleasant house in a pleasant suburb, and had children. Dana’s mind flashed to a visit they’d made to this spot, years ago. Morgan’s face, still round and plump with the vestiges of babyhood, was drawn with worry because they were out of bread and some of the ducks hadn’t gotten a turn.
“You really should have brought more,” Kenneth had groused at Dana.
Who cares what you think?
Dana remembered silently retorting.
And then last January he had broken her heart. She glanced at Alder, pale and tear-streaked, staring hollow-eyed out the window, and thought,
But it didn’t look like this.
Dana had been horror-struck when Kenneth ended the marriage. But her heart? Was it that or her neatly arranged life that had been hacked apart with a dull knife and then hastily sewn back together with visible seams and hanging threads? Alder’s anguish was clearly so deeply personal it seemed to vibrate through her body like blasts from a sonic boom.
“Did you ever hate anyone
that much
?” Alder whispered, her voice hoarse as if she’d recently been screaming. “Did you ever feel so . . .”
“Betrayed?” said Dana. “No, honey, I don’t think I ever did. Not like you seem to.”
“Not even Kenneth?”
Dana wondered how much to say. Alder was in adult-size pain and yet was still a young girl. “Well,” said Dana finally, “things weren’t really right with us for a while. I was very upset, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t think I felt quite as . . . attacked by an ally as you seem to feel.”
Tears rose again in Alder’s lower lids. “He was my
best friend.
The best one I ever had.”
“You loved him.” Dana stroked the hair off Alder’s damp cheeks. “And you trusted him.”
Alder’s hands flew to cover her face, as if she were about to lose pieces of herself that she would never get back. Her weeping was ragged and painful-sounding. She rocked back and forth against the car seat.
“Ahh!”
she keened.
“Ahhh!”
It went on and on, and it scared Dana.
What if she’s having a nervous breakdown?
she thought.
What if I’m sitting here doing nothing, watching her lose her mind?
She kept her hand on Alder’s arm, not sure if the weeping girl could even perceive it but wanting nonetheless to remind her that she wasn’t alone. Dana herself had so often felt as if she were wandering the craters of some forgotten moon, orbiting a distant planet. She needed to keep Alder tethered to the earth, to a place where she was loved and wanted and where her pain mattered to someone, even if it was just an aunt with problems of her own.
The rocking slowed and came to a stop; the harsh keening trailed off into sobs. Dana slid her hand up to the back of Alder’s neck and gently pulsed her fingers against the straining muscles.
“Oh, sweetie,” she murmured. “Sweet, sweet girl.”
Alder’s hands slid down from her face and dropped into her lap. “I’m so . . . fucking . . .
stupid.
”
“No, baby,” soothed Dana. “You’re just human. We all get caught off guard sometimes.”
“Not me.” Alder glanced at her for the first time. “I notice stuff— things other people don’t pick up on. Connie says it’s the artist in me, always watching.”
Dana wasn’t sure how to respond to this. It was true, Alder was very perceptive, the epitome of an old soul. But did she really believe she’d be able to see the truth in every situation?
“Like Jet,” said Alder, running the back of her hand under her dripping chin. “Everyone sees this weird girl with too much eyeliner and a shitbox car and a mother who doesn’t even
pretend
to try to keep track of her. But she’s good inside. And I think she’s going to do good things—not like soon, but someday.”
“Have you ever told her this?”
Alder shrugged and inhaled a sniffle. “A little.” She looked over at the pine trees. “You have to be careful how much you say. It weirds people out.”
True enough,
thought Dana. Her hand rose up to the back of Alder’s head, her fingers smoothing out the tension in the girl’s scalp. Alder closed her eyes and took a normal-size breath. “So . . .” said Dana. “This betrayal from Ethan. You didn’t see it coming.” Alder’s head shake was so subtle that Dana sensed it more with her hand than with her eyes. “And that compounds the misery, because you think you should’ve been able to.” An all-but-imperceptible nod from Alder. “And you don’t want to tell anyone because . . . ?”
Alder’s chest rose with an influx of air, then sank even deeper into her frame. “Because words are stupid. They’re like those plastic letters with the magnets that little kids stick on the fridge. If I spell it out, it’s like trying to say something you can’t spell with plastic.” She glanced at Dana to see if she understood. Dana didn’t fully, but she nodded, wanting to keep Alder talking.
“But I guess not saying anything wasn’t really working that well either.” Alder sighed and gazed out at the rotting picnic tables. “He was in my world-civ class because he, like, flunked it or something when he had mono freshman year and they wouldn’t let him graduate without it.”
She had taken an interest in him right away, she told Dana, not for any obvious reason that she could name but just because, sitting sluggishly at his battered desk three seats up and one row over, he’d seemed thoughtful and good. “He used to come to the studio during his free periods and do these wicked-cheesy watercolors.” Ethan knew he had no talent for art, she said, and he didn’t care. She loved that about him.
And though she was a freshman and he was a senior, they soon became inseparable. “We were, you know, those weird kids who never do sports or clubs or dances or anything else the school throws at you.” Her chin seemed to quaver for a moment. “It was just totally . . . easy.”
“But you weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend,” said Dana. Alder’s gaze dropped slightly, and she shook her head. “Did you want to be?” asked Dana.
“I liked him,” admitted Alder, her voice small. “But he didn’t really think of me that way.” Though his lack of romantic interest in her was disappointing, mostly she was just happy to have someone she could be completely herself with.
She seemed relieved to talk about him, as Dana suspected she might. It made sense to cry yourself hoarse and want to do violence to someone who’d hurt you. What didn’t make sense, but was somehow just as compelling, was to remember the time before the moment of betrayal. Ethan had known all there was to know about her, and that warm, silky comfort of being known and loved, though no longer existent, was somehow no less real.
“Alder,” Dana said gently, “what happened?”
Alder’s jaw went tight. “He wanted—” She clenched her molars and started again. “He didn’t want to be a virgin when he got to college. But he didn’t want some lame hookup . . . so he asked me. He said I didn’t have to,” she added quickly. “He was totally embarrassed even bringing it up.”
Because he was smart enough to see how badly it could hurt you,
thought Dana.
“How did it go?” she asked, trying to keep her voice even and light.
Alder’s eyes filled again. “Totally great,” she whispered. “Especially afterward, when we were lying there all . . . like every single piece of us was connected.” She made a little gasp for air, but it wasn’t enough to keep her from crying again. “You know how that feels? When your minds and bodies are, like,
merged
?”
Dana wasn’t sure if she did know. “Did you see each other after that?” she asked.
“No,” Alder choked out between sobs. “He didn’t . . . He said he needed to . . . spend time with his other friends and his family before he left for . . . I tried to . . . but he
wouldn’t.
” She turned to Dana, her face awash, eyes begging for some possible explanation. “He wouldn’t see me—not even to say good-bye!”
That goddamned fucking little bastard,
thought Dana.
She leaned across the console of cup holders between their seats and put her arms around the brokenhearted girl. “Oh, sweetie,” she murmured. “Not fair. Not fair at all.”