Bright Young Women(19)

“We’ve been here.”

“Even in the morning?”

“What time did you call?”

“I tried you around five.”

“That was you?” my father said, then raised his voice. “Marion! It was Pammy calling this morning!”

They’d heard the phone ring. They’d heard the phone ring before the sun came up and they hadn’t gotten out of bed to answer it, though they had two daughters who no longer lived under their roof. I’d soon learn my mother had her reasons for keeping me at arm’s length, and while I’d go on to forge an unexpected connection with my father, I would never shake the image of them lying in bed with the covers over their heads when I needed them most.

I looked over at Brian and he nodded at me—a vote of confidence. I would not be taking his advice to sound smart and sure and capable, which was how he’d coached me as I’d dialed the number for home. It was good advice for a girl with normal parents, but I was wounded, and I needed my parents to tend to me for once. I would make what had happened sound as bad as I could, as bad as it was, really.

“Something awful has happened, Dad,” I said.

There was an anxious pause that I savored. “Should I get your mother?”

I refused to let him off the hook. “Someone broke into our house last night and attacked a bunch of the girls. Denise is dead.”

“Pamela!” my father cried, and the load on my heart lightened. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m not hurt. But I saw him. I’m the only one who saw him, Dad.”

“Thank God you’ve never needed glasses,” he said, and at the time I thought it was a funny comment to make, but later, I’d realize that was his lawyer brain at work. No one on the defense team could suggest that my vision was spotty and therefore my identification unreliable. “Let me go get your mother.”

I heard him say my mother’s name, the shuffling of his feet as he moved toward wherever she was in the house. The wait for her to come to the phone was much shorter than it felt. I was bursting with things I’d wanted to say to her since I was a child.

“Remember to let them know about the precautions you’re taking,” Brian whispered while I waited for my mother to come to the phone so I could tell her about everything but the precautions I was taking.

“Pamela,” she said, sounding nervous. Like I was the authority figure, she was in big trouble, and she would not even need to ask why. “What’s happened?”

“Mom,” I said, and just the word on my lips brought me to tears. “Where have you been?”

“We were—”

“Where have you been? Where have you been?” I kept repeating it, my voice a ferocious roar, husky with hurt. “You are my mother! You are my mother and you answer the phone! You answer the fucking phone!” I looked over at Brian, who was staring at the floor respectfully, like I was changing and he was trying to give me privacy. Though we’d had sex, he’d never really seen me naked.

On the other end of the phone, I heard my mother weeping. We had been performing the same dance all our lives—one in which I asked for little and received even less—but that was the moment I changed the steps on her. She never quite caught up, but she did try.



* * *




That night, sleep tackled me from behind, pinned my shoulders down, and released me at 2:59 on the nose. I did not yet understand the significance of that minute, nor the hours it would go on to collect from me over the next forty-three years. I knew only that it was late, it was dark, the wind was rattling the shutters, and Bernadette didn’t sound like she was breathing. I jammed my elbow into her side, and she yelped softly.

“Why did you do that?”

“You’re awake?”

“Of course I’m awake.”

I sprang up, my pulse pummeling the bridge of my nose. “Why? Did you hear something?”

“No. But I didn’t hear anything last night, did I?”

I groped around wildly, trying to find the lamp, nearly knocking it over and scratching the walnut nightstand before managing to turn it on. I scrambled out of bed and pushed the curtain aside, same blue-and-white chinoiserie pattern as the rug, same blue-and-white chinoiserie as the seat of the very small chair in the corner, checking to make sure the skinny, scared police guard wasn’t splayed out on the front steps with his throat cut. But his scalp gleamed pink as he scanned the fields from left to right and right to left. The land was too vast for one man to monitor, and yet what had happened had happened in a full house with neighbors on all sides. Maybe what felt unsafe was safe. Maybe I should never sleep through the night again.

I tripped over one of Bernadette’s shoes and splintered my shin on the baseboard of the bed. I face-planted onto the sheets and curled up in the fetal position, moaning in pain. Denise was not a neat freak, but she seemed to understand that my penchant for order and organization was about something deeper, so she did the best she could to honor it. If Denise were here with me in this room, her shoes would be in the closet and not strewn all over the floor. If Denise were here, she would ask what the hell was wrong with that very small chair in the corner, too small for an adult and too fancy for a child. If Denise were here, she would have made me laugh with her opinions, her observations, the remarkable lens through which she saw the world.