Becoming Chloe Read online

  We walk block after block, saying nothing. We cross against lights. Stop traffic. Ignore the honking, the flipped fingers.

  About a half mile from home Chloe says, “That got bad, Jordy.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Why do things get really bad like that?”

  “Chlo,” I say, “I’ll be goddamned if I know.”

  * * *

  I leave Chloe and the coat in the cellar and go close the bank account. Take all the money back to the cellar in my sock. We never go into this cellar by daylight, but it doesn’t seem to matter today, because we’ll never come back here again. We roll our stuff into the blankets and tie them up tight. We sit with our backs up against the wall, waiting for dark to come.

  “This is your lucky day, Chlo.”

  “It is? Why?”

  “Because you always wanted to get out of the city.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know. But I promise you we’ll have either a lawn, some bushes, or a tree.”

  “Wow. That’s pretty lucky.”

  I can’t imagine I’ll sleep while we’re sitting there waiting to go. In fact, I can’t imagine I’ll ever sleep again. I think I’ll just sit up for the rest of my life, my eyes getting redder and redder, staring off into space, wondering why things are like they are.

  Then after a while Chloe pokes me. “You’re snoring,” she says. “Stop that.”

  On the walk down to the Port Authority, I hold Chloe’s left hand. She has something clutched in her right, but I don’t ask what. I figure she has a right to some privacy.

  “This was a really bad day,” she says.

  “I know, Chlo. I’m sorry.”

  “But then it turned into my lucky day. It turned around and got good.”

  Her hand pulls away from mine, and she runs to a place under the street lamp. Stands in the round wash of light and dances. Spins around like a ballerina on her toes. Chloe is having one of her ballerina days. “Lawns,” she says, and spins. “Bushes,” she says, turning. “Trees.”

  On the word “trees” her right hand flies up and opens and a snowstorm of paper confetti sails. I watch it catch on the wind, settle at my feet. I nudge a piece with my foot. I pluck three or four pieces out of the air, out of my hair.

  “Your house pictures, Chloe. You tore them up?”

  “Won’t need them anymore,” she says.

  I look down at my hand again, and there’s one piece that wasn’t torn from a newspaper or a magazine. The paper is too stiff. I look closely at it and see the carefully drawn head of a snake.

  “My crown, Chlo? You ripped up my crown?”

  “Won’t need it anymore,” she says.

  Then she gives me back her hand and we walk.

  THREE

  * * *

  JORDY’S HOMETOWN

  The first place we go look at is a disaster. A basement apartment. It didn’t say that in the ad. Also no lawn, no bushes, no trees.

  The second one is a dream, though an unattainable one. I mean, for God’s sake. I don’t even have a job. And I never managed to hold one before. Not with Chloe to look after. So what we’re doing here, I don’t know. But we’re here. Because I promised. And I already know Chloe is never going to want to leave.

  It’s a small apartment built into the back of this old guy’s house. Two back bedrooms converted into a small unit. Hot plate only, but with a bath and shower. Furnished. And it’s cheap. Really cheap. I forgot how cheap you can live in this town. When he tells me the price, I actually have that in my sock. So we could actually stay a month. Potentially, we could. Before it all falls down. The house is on a big lot with a lawn all the way around. Of course, the grass is getting brown now, with winter coming on. But Chloe doesn’t seem to care. She seems to trust it to go green again. It’s fenced all around, with bare rosebushes against the fence every few feet. In the spring I’m sure it will be incredible, but I can’t imagine we’ll get to still be here by then.

  There isn’t a tree exactly, but in another way there is. The trunk is in the neighboring yard, but branches spill over the old man’s driveway, dropping red-and-orange leaves and whirlybirds. That’s what we used to call them when I was a kid. Whirlybirds. Those seedpods with tails. If you throw them up in the air, they spin like little helicopter rotors all the way down.

  The old guy is showing me the apartment, and I look out the back window and there’s Chloe in the driveway, picking up handful after handful of whirlybirds and throwing them into the air over her head. Laughing as they copter down all around her. How did she know that? I wonder. Maybe she grew up someplace with whirlybirds. The early part of growing up. I don’t know how Chloe grew up. We never ask each other questions about the past. That’s one of the reasons why this works.

  The old man wanders over to see what I’m staring at. He walks like he has steel rods from his waist down, holding everything in line. He’s really old. “She’s an exuberant girl,” he says. But he doesn’t say it like an insult, so I decide he’s okay.

  “I think she likes it here,” I say.

  There’s a dog run in the corner of the yard, with a red doghouse at one end. I don’t notice it until a massively overweight, geriatric Doberman pinscher waddles out of the doghouse, through the open run gate, and waddles fast in Chloe’s direction. Fast enough that I think he might think he’s running.

  “Shoot,” the old guy says. “Thought I had ’im locked up.” He runs for the back door, the private entrance to our—hopefully—new place. “Don’t move,” he yells to Chloe. “Just don’t move a muscle. I’ll come get ’im.”

  Chloe picks up another handful of whirlybirds and launches them. Then she sees the Doberman waddle-running in her direction, and she runs to him. Meets him halfway. Gets down on her knees and throws her arms around his neck. “Good dog,” she says.

  The good dog wags his stump of a tail.

  Meanwhile, the old guy hasn’t even made it off the stoop. “Well, I’ll be darned,” he says.

  “I’m going to take the place,” I say. And I hand him two hundred dollars from my sock.

  “First and last plus a security deposit.”

  “Let me give you a deposit on it,” I say. “I’ll give you a hundred to hold the place, not rent it to anyone.” I hold the money out to him again. I move it slightly, wiggle it back and forth. Like the guy’s a cat, and I can make him jump for it. I don’t know why I bother. I don’t have last month’s rent. I don’t have a security deposit. I don’t have a job. I must not have a brain in my head, leading Chloe to the land of lawns, bushes, and trees just long enough to make her never want to leave again.

  He takes it. “I hold the place a week, tops. You lose your deposit if it doesn’t work out.”

  I go out in the backyard to talk to Chloe, and the dog grabs me by the back pocket of my jeans. He’s snarling, and he won’t let go.

  The old guy screams at him. “Out, Bruno! Bruno! Out!”

  But Bruno’s teeth remain in the “in” position. The guy has to come out and pull him off me. Lock him up in the pen. I look at the back of my jeans as best I can. I can see the holes his teeth made.

  Chloe gives me a handful of whirlybirds. I see she expects me to throw them, so I do.

  The old man has gone back in the house now, and the dog is snarling at me through the wire of his run.

  “Good dog,” Chloe says.

  As we’re walking up the driveway, Chloe says, “Wow. Your parents are rich.”

  “This might be bad, Chlo. Just so you know.”

  “What might happen?”

  “My father might scream at me. Or he might even hit me.”

  “What do I do if he hits you?”

  “Nothing. You do nothing. You just get out of the way and trust me to take care of it.”

  I knock on the door. I expected my stomach to be doing all these fluttery things, or cold things, or tight things, but instead I just have a spot right in the middle of me that f
eels dead.

  My mother opens the door. It’s a weekday morning, but every hair is in place, her makeup is perfect, her long shell-pink nails are perfectly manicured. I’m not surprised, because it always was that way. I’m just taking it in. I won’t say her eyes go wide or she clutches her chest or any stupid things like that, because none of it happens anyway. A quick scared thing flits through her eyes, that’s all. Then she puts it away again.

  “Jordan. My God. Your father is right out in the garage. How is this a good idea?”

  “Good to see you, too, Mom.” I know, have always known, that this is the crucial moment. I might not even be allowed in. “Mom,” I say. “This is Chloe.”

  I watch my mother’s face for a minute, noticing—almost enjoying—how she despises moments like this. The kind where she’s thrown completely off her stride, where her composure takes a step to the side and she has to scramble to find it again. There are things I still haven’t forgiven her. More the things she allowed than the things she did, but some of both, I suppose.

  “Can we come in for a minute?” She’s still not ready to answer, so I just lead Chloe in. We sit down on the edge of the sofa, close together, holding hands.

  Then I hear a new voice, one I didn’t think to expect. It says, “Jordy?” And then I see her face, peeking around a potted plant. “Jordy, you’re here. I heard your voice.”

  My mother says, “Go back to bed, pumpkin.”

  I say, “What are you doing home from school, peanut?” My sister is only nine. She was an accident. As far as my parents are concerned. I think she was a good enough idea.

  “Her asthma is acting up,” my mother says. As always, giving Pammy no room to speak. As always, discussing her like she at least isn’t around. Maybe like she never was.

  “Pammy,” I say. “This is Chloe.”

  “Chloe.” She makes it sound like a nice thing. She’s standing off from the situation; she catches its volatility. There’s still a potted palm between us, but I can see her thick bangs. She wears them long, almost over her eyes. When I was younger I wanted to say, Good luck, kiddo. Grow them as long as you want, but the world is still all right there to see. But I didn’t say that. I did my best to be kind.

  Chloe responds to the introduction by waving the way a prom queen waves from a parade float. She must be having a prom queen day, which is a new one on me.

  “Pamela, I said go!” my mother shouts. Chloe jumps, and then the potted palm is empty.

  “Mom, I’m going to make this quick. I’m going to get right to it. We have a chance to get on our feet and live in a decent place, but some things have come up that we didn’t expect.”

  “You need money.”

  “I never hit you for college, I walked out of here with the clothes on my back.” Actually, I walked out of the hospital with the clothes on my back, but why split hairs? “I never asked you for money, and if you help us out today, I promise I won’t ask again.”

  She rises dramatically from her chair. “Well, the money was never the problem, Jordan.”

  She finds her purse on the wet bar and brings her checkbook back, opens it onto the coffee table. “I can give you a thousand. Any more and I’d need your father to sign. He won’t, of course.”

  I shake my head. “We don’t need that much. Another five hundred and we’d get the place.”

  She stares at me like I’ve just said something in Swahili. “We can spare it.”

  “I don’t want to take any more from you than I have to.”

  She continues with the confused look for a beat or two. Then she writes out the check. I wait for some kind of comment. Like she might say, That shows a certain ethic on your part. Or, I’m glad you want to do as much on your own as possible. In other words, I never learn.

  “You always were a stubborn boy.” She holds the check out to me and I take it. It’s for a thousand. “Now for God’s sake please go before your father—”

  “He’s in the garage? I’m going in there.”

  “Dear God, Jordan, no.”

  But I’m already up off the sofa. “Wait right here, Chlo. It’s okay.” I refuse to walk out of this place like a whipped puppy, my tail between my legs. At least, I refuse to do it again.

  My father has a workshop in the garage. He restores cars. He could afford to pay somebody to restore them for him, but I guess that wouldn’t be the same. Then he might have time to go in the house or something. I step into his shop, and he’s working on the Stutz. All this time later, he’s still working on the freaking Stutz. I don’t know why I should be surprised. It just confirms my suspicion that he never wants to be done.

  He’s standing looking into the engine. Just looking. He has a vinyl drop cloth over the fender, and on top of this a cigar burns in an ashtray. I notice an absence of tools. Maybe he’s too close to done, and he’s reduced to staring. I also notice that his bald spot is gone. Then a moment later I realize it’s just black. His hair is dyed jet black now, and he’s using some product to make the bald spot black, too. If you look right at it, it’s pretty obvious.

  He could see me out of his peripheral vision, but he doesn’t make it clear if he does or not. And I’m still not scared. I know, because I keep checking. But it’s still just that dead spot.

  After a minute he says, “The answer is no.”

  So I say, “What’s the question?”

  “Whatever the question is, the answer is no.” He picks up the cigar and puffs furiously. The air all around his head fills with bluish smoke. He still won’t look at me. “What’d you come for,” he asks, “money?”

  “Partly,” I say, because I refuse to be cowardly with him.

  He waits a moment, then says, “Uh-huh. Look, there’s just too much bad blood between us.”

  “I know.”

  “Why’d you even come out here then?”

  I don’t bother to answer. I just leave. I know the answer, I just don’t bother to tell him. Because I could. That’s the answer. To prove that I could.

  On the way down the front steps with Chloe I hear Pammy’s voice again. “Jordy.” I turn around and she’s on the cold steps behind me in pajamas and bare feet. I walk back to her and stand a couple of steps down so we’re the same height, looking each other in the face. “Take me with you, Jordy.”

  “I can’t, peanut. I’m sorry.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m just barely keeping my own head above water here.”

  “Oh. Okay. Do me a favor, Jordy?”

  “What’s that, peanut?”

  “Be okay.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Okay, I’ll really try. Will you do me the same favor?”

  She doesn’t exactly answer. Just says, “Bye, Jordy. Bye, Chloe.”

  Chloe does that parade wave again.

  Then my mother comes down the stairs and grabs Pammy by the arm and spins her around and sends her running back into the house with a swat on the butt. Like Pammy was three or something. “It’s cold out here. Get in that house before you catch bronchitis again.”

  My mother turns back to me. She looks at me like she’s seeing me differently. I’m out here in the bright daylight and she sees something she didn’t see before. I expect her to say, Jordan. You’re almost a grown man now. In other words, I never learn.

  I guess I should have noticed she was looking at my forehead.

  “You still have that scar,” she says.

  “I’ll always have that scar,” I say.

  On the night of the first snow, we’re in our new place. In a real bed, with a mattress and box springs. And on a frame, not even down on the floor. With sheets. There’s a gas furnace, and it’s kind of rattly and loud, but it really makes the place warm. There’s a window right by the bed, and we’re lying here, not quite asleep. I think we’re both lying here just enjoying this. Just feeling how great it is to have sheets, heat. A bathroom five steps away.

  I look out the window and it’s snowing. Hard.

  �
��Look, Chlo,” I say.

  Her head pops up and she watches the snow for a minute. Then she throws the covers back and runs out the back door, still in her nightshirt with her feet bare. I’m thinking maybe she’s planning on making snow angels in her nightshirt, in which case she’ll freeze. She’ll get frostbite for real. I watch out the window and she runs across the yard to the dog run and opens it and Bruno comes waddling out to greet her. Then she brings him back into our apartment.

  “What are you doing, Chlo? Bruno never gets to come in the house. You know that.”

  “He’ll get cold.”

  “He’ll also bite me.”

  “No, he won’t. Watch.” She leads Bruno by the collar over to our bed. “Bruno, this is Jordy. Be nice to Jordy. Give him your hand, Jordy.”

  Reluctantly, I hold one hand out for him to sniff. He sniffs it, licks it once, then flops down on the rug beside the bed with a deep sigh. Smart dog, I think. He knows if he bites me, he’s back out in the snow.

  Chloe climbs back into bed with me. Her feet are wet and freezing. I make her give them to me so I can rub them until they warm up. So she doesn’t get frostbite.

  “Chlo, that dog slept outside for years before you lived here.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “But now I live here.”

  Bruno is already snoring. Also, it doesn’t take long to discover that flatulence is a Bruno concern. But I know better than to complain. I snore sometimes, and Chloe doesn’t make me sleep out in the snow.

  It’s a few months later. Nearly spring. I’m on my way to check on the old guy, who lets us call him by his first name now. Otis. I’m on my way to check on Otis, because it’s my job. He’s going downhill. Chloe is lying on the bed watching I Love Lucy. We have a TV now, but as far as Chloe is concerned, there’s only one program on, ever. Everything else bores her to tears.

  “I’m going to check on Otis now,” I say.

  “Check on Bruno, too. Okay, Jordy? Will you see if Bruno’s okay?”

  “Why? Doesn’t he seem okay to you?”