Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self - By Danielle Evans Page 0,44
her to come back, but I was not given to sweeping romantic gestures. Anyway, I didn’t know where to look. She’d worked in the bookstore that I managed, pouring overpriced and watered-down coffee for people too cheap to buy books before reading them. I was so used to her being everywhere I was that I had no idea where to look for her once she was not. Her coworkers didn’t know where she’d gone, even when I abused my authority as manager to bribe them with shift changes and unearned overtime bonuses. Really, there was no one else to ask. I was not the first person she’d disappeared from in her life.
After I got done being angry at her for walking out like that, I was pissed that she had compared me to a caterpillar—though I had to admit, hungover and sprawled on the living room carpet, I was not unlike a spineless insect. It was, I told myself, the suddenness of the whole thing; sudden for me, anyway. Scanning the bedroom, I noticed that all of her perfumes and brushes and inexplicable tubes and creams were gone, that as impulsive as her leaving seemed, she’d thought about it long enough to pack completely.
It was beautiful in Boston when the train pulled up, and even more beautiful when I arrived in Harvard Square via rental car. Harvard’s campus seemed designed to demonstrate to outsiders what was missing in their lives. It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and the Square was much emptier than the other time I’d visited, but the trees were lush with color, and the brick buildings looked almost theatrical. I parked without much trouble and waited for Liddie on a cobblestone corner until she finally appeared wrapped in a brown sweatshirt that was too big and too plain-looking to actually belong to her. Her hair had been dyed some shade of burgundy since I’d seen her last, and she’d lost weight in a way that made her features look sharper.
After confirming that Mom had authorized me to use her credit card for this trip, Liddie dragged me to a Mediterranean restaurant called Casablanca for dinner. It had giant scenes from the movie painted on the walls, and while we gorged ourselves, me on three kinds of chicken, Liddie on dressed-up squash, she dramatically said things like Well, there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade and You know how you sound, Mr. Blaine? Like a man who’s trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t believe in his heart. Mostly she was speaking to her silverware, which both entertained me and kept me from having to make conversation. We were at wine and dessert before she asked me about myself.
“What’s with you?” she asked. “Where’s wifey?”
“That’s a boring story,” I said. “What happened to the poet?”
“Broke up with him. He loved me so much, it was starting to get weird. Besides, he wasn’t a very good poet.” Liddie licked some chocolate off of her spoon. “That was a boring story too. Tell me something interesting.”
“Someone’s been using my Social Security number to get credit cards,” I said.
“I thought you couldn’t even use your Social Security number to get credit cards anymore,” Liddie said.
“That’s the thing,” I said, “Fucker makes his payments on time more often than I do. The cops said he’s probably illegal or something and just needs the number.”
“Undocumented,” said Liddie, “and there are cops involved?”
I told her about my unexpected visitors.
“Aren’t you curious?” Liddie asked when I’d finished my story. “I mean, don’t you want to find this guy?”
It was moments like this when I remembered why I loved my sister so much: anyone else would have nagged me about the paperwork. Liddie looked like she’d been presented with an early Christmas present and couldn’t wait a week to shake it or carefully peel the wrapping.
“His name’s Carlos Aguilar,” I said, and I didn’t mean for there to be anything in my voice when I said it, but Liddie flinched anyway. Then she shrugged.
“There’s like fifty billion people named Carlos Aguilar,” she said. “He’s not ours.”
“Of course not,” I said, as if the thought had never crossed my mind, maybe like I didn’t even remember the name.
It wasn’t impossible that I’d forgotten; I deliberately remembered very little about the accident and the years immediately following it. What I remember about the year after the accident is mostly silence: the silence of our house without the