How to Disappear(44)

After a while, she’s so sick of me folding her afghan over her knees and waving my palm at her for the word on long life, she’s ready to throw me out of the house.

She thinks I poisoned her coffee. When J finally shows up, tapping on the kitchen window, she thinks he’s come to arrest me.

I want to hug him until my arms are too tired to keep hugging. But he swoops in and hugs me first. I’m enveloped in it. Also trapped. But all I feel is relieved.

When he steps back, he looks me over like the vice principal checking for bra straps and too-short skirts and random inappropriateness.

He says, “Good job! You look great.”

I have black hair parted down the middle, black eyebrows, and red bow lips. I turned one of Mrs. P’s old thermal tops into a white waffle-weave shirt. Over a black skirt.

Blah.

But a different style of blah.

“Like I looked terrible before?”

“You were supposed to look different, that’s all I meant.”

“Joking.” I reach up to touch where his cheekbone is swollen, but he pulls back. “You still look pretty beat-up.”

I’m so glad to see him, it’s borderline pathetic. I tell myself I’d be happy to see a friendly dachshund. Facing the fact that I don’t like being alone. But it’s not the same thing. The dachshund wouldn’t have its paws under the waistband of my awful skirt.

He says, “Can I get into the garage?”

I start to hand him my key ring, but why? There isn’t any reason Mrs. P can’t see him. It’s not like she’ll remember. And what if she did? What if she told her totally indifferent son, Walter? I could go, No, Walter, it wasn’t my boyfriend, it was a praying mantis.

The worst part is, it would be plausible.

No, the worst part is seeing J with her. How sweet he is.

I wish I could keep him. Bag him and drag him back to Cotter’s Mill. Go, Hey J, I’m not who you think—fooled ya! Wanna be my boyfriend?

Pretend he never saw me stab that guy. Another episode of things that look like the fun kind of bad spinning out of control. Him spinning with me.

He walks through the kitchen door like nothing happened. Like he’s my playmate with a half-assed disguise. Not my partner in what might have been a crime.

I have to keep reminding myself that him-and-me isn’t real.

That even if I don’t ever go back home (reality), if I accept that and go, Yay, new life with permanent bad hair and giant thighs (reality), he’d still be with a made-up girl.

If I’m with anyone ever from now on, that person will be with a made-up girl.

Mrs. Podolski yells, “Officer!”

J says, “Can I get you more tomato soup?”

He looks over at me, smiling at me, and I try to think about something other than the fact that at some point I’m going to have to shed Catherine G. Davis and never see him again.

Such as, how weird is it that a lady who buries her silverware can still tell if her soup comes from a can or from a fresh tomato?

And how hot J looks in oven mitts.

I settle Mrs. P in front of the TV with soup and Sprite on her favorite tray (violets painted on a white metal background) and her favorite nighttime show (QVC selling handbags).

Back in the kitchen, J is staring down my stash of Toaster Strudel and Oreos. The cupboard door is hanging open. If my life didn’t revolve around avoiding death every minute when he isn’t underfoot distracting me, I’d die of shame.

“You don’t feed her this crap, do you?”

“Constantly. If I stuff her veins with enough cholesterol, who knows, I could inherit that couch.”

I swear he’s trying to figure out how many bags of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies it took to pad my behind. Calculating how big I’ll be once I’ve emptied that cupboard down my throat.

“Do you ever worry about malnutrition?”

“Do you ever worry girls will smack you?”

“I feel relatively safe as long as I outweigh you.”

“Not for long.” I pull a box of Hostess Sno Balls from the cupboard, take out a Sno Ball, and bite into it.

“Are we going to share?”

“Nope.” But I hand him one, a pink one. I don’t even know why I eat this garbage when the kitchen’s full of things I baked.

He says, almost casually but in a tight, tight voice, “I’m supposed to be in my cousin’s wedding. This is probably what they’ll serve. I was going to cancel, but maybe I should keep everything looking normal. You think?”

This is it. The kiss-off. He leaves, and I’m out of here. I’ll call Walter from the bus, tell him to get another aide for Mrs. P. Fast.

I say, “Classy. Where is it?”

“South Dakota. The drive is going to take longer than the whole event.”

“Come on. No bachelor party and rehearsal dinner and binge drinking with the bridesmaids?” (Camel chitchats while exiting oasis.) “Maybe the binge drinking.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow. I should be back by Monday. Tuesday if I’m passed out in a drunken stupor with a couple of bridesmaids.”

Tomorrow?

I feel something I’m not supposed to feel. Big-time. I make myself smile. My face is the kind of mask that doesn’t have tear ducts. “Help yourself. You want a drunk bridesmaid, go to. It’s not like I’m your girlfriend.”