“And where’s your lovely watch?” she asks.
I look down at my wrist. I see my birthmark, ugly, nak*d, blaring. I yank down my sweater sleeve to cover it. “He has it.”
She clucks her tongue. “They’ll do that, sometimes. Take things as a sort of trophy. Like serial killers.” She takes a final slurp of her tea. “Now, shall we take you to Melanie?”
I hand Ms. Foley the scrap of paper with Veronica’s address, and she pulls out a London A–Z book to chart our way. I fall asleep on the Tube, my tears wrung out, the blankness of exhaustion the only comfort I have now. Ms. Foley shakes me awake at Veronica’s stop and leads me to the redbricked Victorian house where her flat is.
Melanie comes bounding to the door, already dressed up for tonight’s trip to the theater. Her face is lit up with anticipation, waiting to hear a really good story. But then she sees Ms. Foley, and her expression skids. Without knowing anything, she knows everything: She bid Lulu farewell at the train station yesterday, and it’s Allyson being returned to her like damaged goods. She gives the slightest of nods, as if none of this surprises her. Then she kicks off her heels and opens her arms to me, and when I step into them, the humiliation and heartbreak bring me to my knees. Melanie sinks to the ground alongside me, her arms hugging me tight. Behind me, I hear Ms. Foley’s retreating footsteps. I let her leave without saying a word. I don’t thank her. And I already know that I never will, and that is wrong considering the great kindness she’s done me. But if I am to survive, I can never, ever visit this day again.
PART TWO
One Year
Fourteen
SEPTEMBER
College
Allyson. Allyson. Are you there?”
I pull the pillow over my head and scrunch my eyes shut, faking sleep.
The key turns in the lock as my roommate Kali pushes open the door. “I wish you wouldn’t lock the door when you are here. And I know you’re not asleep. You’re just playing dead. Like Buster.”
Buster is Kali’s dog. A Lhasa apso. She has pictures of him among the dozens tacked up on the wall. She told me all about Buster last July when we had our initial howdy-roommate phone call. Back then, I thought Buster sounded cute, and I found it quirky that Kali was named for her home state, and the way she talked—as if she were punching her words somehow—seemed sweet.
“Okaay, Allyson. Fine. Don’t answer, but look, can you call your parents back? Your mother called my cell looking for you.”
From under the pillows, I open my eyes. I’d wondered how long I could leave my phone uncharged before something would happen. Already there’s been a mysterious UPS delivery. I was half expecting a carrier pigeon to arrive. But calling my roommates?
I hide under the pillow as Kali changes into going-out clothes, applying makeup and spritzing herself with that vanilla-scented perfume that gets into everything. After she leaves, I take the pillow off my head and swing my legs over the side of the bed. I push aside my chemistry textbook, the highlighter sitting in the crease, uncapped, ever hopeful it’ll get used before it dries up from neglect. I locate my dead phone in my sock drawer and kick through the dirty laundry piled in my closet for the charger. When it charges back to life, the voice mail box tells me I have twenty-two new messages. I scroll through the missed calls. Eighteen are from my parents. Two from my grandmother. One from Melanie, and one from the registrar.
“Hi, Allyson, it’s your mother. Just calling to check in to see how everything is going. Give me a call.”
“Hi, Allyson. It’s Mom. I got the new Boden catalog, and there are some cute skirts. And some warm corduroy jeans. I’ll just order some and bring them up for Parents’ Weekend. Call me back!”
Then there’s one from my dad. “Your mother wants to know where we should make reservations for Parents’ Weekend: Italian or French or maybe Japanese. I told her you’d be grateful for anything. I can’t imagine dorm food has improved that much in twenty-five years.”
Then we’re back to Mom: “Allyson, is your phone broken? Please tell me you did not lose that too. Can you please touch base? I’m trying to schedule Parents’ Weekend. I thought I might to come to classes with you. . . .”
“Hi, Ally, it’s Grandma. I’m on Facebook now. I’m not sure how it works, so make me your friend. Or you could call me. But I want to do it how you kids do it.”
“Allyson, it’s Dad. Call your mother. Also, we are trying to get reservations at Prezzo. . . .”
“Allyson, are you ill? Because I can really think of no other explanation for the radio silence. . . .”
The messages go downhill from there, Mom acting like three months, not three days, have gone by since our last phone call. I wind up deleting the last batch without even listening, stopping only for Melanie’s rambling account about school and hot New York City guys and the superiority of the pizza there.
I look at the time on my phone. It’s six o’clock. If I call home, maybe Mom will be out and I’ll get the machine. I’m not quite sure what she does with her days now. When I was seven, she wound up leaving her job, even though she didn’t take that maternity leave after all. The plan had been to go back to work once I went to college, but it hasn’t quite got off the ground yet.
She picks up on the second ring. “Allyson, where have you been?” Mom’s voice is officious, a little impatient.
“I ran off to join a cult.” There’s a brief pause, as if she’s actually considering the possibility of this. “I’m at college, Mom. I’m busy. Trying to adjust to the workload.”
“If you think this is bad, wait until medical school. Wait until your residency! I hardly saw your father.”
“Then you should be used to it.”
Mom pauses. This snarkiness of mine is new. Dad says ever since I came back from Europe, I have come down with a case of delayed teenageritis. I never acted like this before, but now I apparently have a bad attitude and a bad haircut and an irresponsibility streak, as evidenced by the fact that I lost not just my suitcase and all its contents, but my graduation watch too, even though, according to the story Melanie and I told them, the suitcase and the watch inside it were stolen off the train. Which theoretically should make me blameless. But it doesn’t. Perhaps because I’m not.
Mom changes the subject. “Did you get the package? It’s one thing if you ignore me, but your grandmother would appreciate a note.”
I kick through the rumpled sour clothes for the UPS box. Wrapped in bubble wrap is an antique Betty Boop alarm clock and a box of black-and-white cookies from Shriner’s, a bakery in our town. The sticky note on the cookies says These are from Grandma.
“I thought the clock would go perfect in your collection.”
“Uh-huh.” I look at the still-packed boxes in my closet, where my alarm clock collection, and all my nonessential stuff from home, still remains.
“And I ordered you a bunch of new clothes. Shall I send them or just bring them up?”
“Just bring them, I guess.”
“Speaking of Parents’ Weekend, we’re firming up plans. Saturday night we are trying to get dinner reservations at Prezzo. Sunday is the brunch, and after that, before we fly home, your father has an alumni thing, so I thought I’d splurge on spa treatments for us. Oh, and Saturday morning, before the luncheon, I’m having coffee with Kali’s mother, Lynn. We’ve been emailing.”
“Why are you emailing my roommate’s mother?”
“Why not?” Mom’s voice is snippy, as if there is no reason for me to be asking about this, as if there is no reason for her not to be present in every single part of my life.
“Well, can you not call Kali’s cell? It’s a little weird.”
“It’s a little weird to have your daughter go incommunicado for a week.”
“Three days, Mom.”
“So you were counting too.” She pauses, scoring herself the point. “And if you would let me install a house phone, we wouldn’t have this issue.”
“No one has landlines anymore. We all have cells. Our own numbers. Please don’t call me on hers.”
“Then return my calls, Allyson.”
“I will. I just lost my charger,” I lie.
Her aggrieved sigh on the other end of the line makes me realize I’ve picked the wrong lie. “Must we tie your belongings to you with a rope these days?” she asks.
“I just loaned it to my roommate, and it got put away with her stuff.”
“You mean Kali?”
Kali and I have barely shared a bar of soap. “Right.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting her and her family. They seem lovely. They invited us to La Jolla.”
I almost ask my mother if she really wants to get chummy with people who named their daughter Kali for California. Mom has a thing about names; she hates nicknames. When I was growing up, she was kind of fascist about it, always trying to prevent anyone from shortening my name to Ally or Al. Grandma ignored her, but everyone else, even teachers at school, toed the line. I never got why, if it bothered her so much, she didn’t just name me something that couldn’t be truncated, even if Allyson is a family name. But I don’t say anything about Kali because if I get bitchy, I’ll blow my cover as Happy College Student. And my mother especially, whose parents couldn’t afford to send her to the college of her choice and who had to work her way through college and later support Dad while he was in medical school, is very intent that I be a Happy College Student.
“I should go,” I tell her. “I’m going out with my roommates tonight.”
“Oh, how fun! Where are you going?”
“To a party.”
“A keg party?”
“Maybe the movies.”
“I just saw a great one with Kate Winslet. You should see that one.”
“Okay, I will.”
“Call me tomorrow. And leave your phone on.”
“Professors tend to frown on calls in classes.” The snark comes out again.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday. And I know your schedule, Allyson. All your classes are in the mornings.”
She would know my schedule. She basically created it. All those morning classes because she said they’d be less attended and I’d get more attention and then I’d have the whole rest of the day for studying. Or, as it turns out, for sleeping.
After we hang up, I shove the alarm clock into a box in my closet and take the cookies and bring them into the lounge where the rest of my roommates have started in on a six-pack. They’re all dressed up and ready to go out.
When school started, the rest of them were so excited. They really were Happy College Students. Jenn made organic brownies, and Kendra drew up a little sign on our door with all our names and a moniker, the Fab Four, atop it. Kali, for her part, gave us coupons to a tanning salon to ward off the inevitable seasonal affective disorder.
Now, a month in, the three of them are a solid unit. And I’m like a goiter. I want to tell Kendra that it’s okay if she takes down the little sign or replaces it with one that says something like Terrific Trio* and Allyson.