make small talk with neighbors and strangers, network, mingle, whatever it is one is supposed to do. There’s too much going on in my head for that sort of thing.
Even though I know I shouldn’t, even though this is not the type of behavior Drew would see as “tightening up,” after we say good night, I slip out the back gate, walk down a paved path lined with palms and recessed lighting that leads to the beach. I give one last look back at Ella’s gathering, but there’s no sign of the girl I saw.
Marlowe slept on the couch, his feet hanging over the edge, the sound of his deep breathing filling the whole place. Not for days, as my mother promised, but for weeks, with no sign of any intention to leave. I hated him and was fascinated by him in equal measure. He didn’t go to school, had dropped out and gotten his GED, he claimed. He spent his days writing and sketching in a collection of battered, mottled notebooks. But somehow he always had money, bought groceries, little gifts for my mother. He’d cooked dinner for us a couple of times, which basically sent my mother into convulsions over him. She raved about his pork chops and Rice-a-Roni like he was Julia Child; she was overcome by his consideration and sweetness. Meanwhile, the fact that I’d cooked dinner five days out of seven (the other two days we had pizza or fried-bologna sandwiches) for I don’t know how long had never even been acknowledged. It made me furious, and I raged about it.
“You’re just jealous,” my mother said, patting my shoulder. “He’s sweet. And we’re all he has right now. Try to be nice.”
God, she was pathetic. She’d do anything for a man—even a teenage boy—who showed her the smallest amount of attention. And there was nothing sweet about him, as far as I could see. The act he put on for my mother, he didn’t bother to use on me. For me Marlowe saved furtive looks—menace or desire, I couldn’t tell. But those eyes, those looks kept me up nights thinking about him, listening to him breathe out on the couch.
I was in a constant state of anxiety—worry about my mother, fear about this killer who might be coming to live with us, hatred for his son who was crashing on our couch, and yes, some secret fascination with Marlowe, too.
He awakened something within my body that was thrilling and unfamiliar. I was spastic around him, clumsy and prone to emotional outbursts or awkward laughter. I hated myself, couldn’t seem to get a grip when he was in the room. The half smile he wore when we were together told me he knew it.
At night our trailer park came alive with sound: singing frogs competing with television sets and rock music, our neighbors yelling and fighting, later stumbling in drunk and noisy, slamming doors. I would lie awake some nights just listening, wondering why I had been exiled to this life. I knew enough to know that I didn’t belong among these poor and angry people, living such ugly lives. But that knowledge wasn’t enough to lift me out.
“Get me out of here, Dad,” I pleaded during one of our weekly telephone conversations. It was a Sunday night; my mother was working late. I cradled the phone to my ear and kept my back to Marlowe, whose presence in our trailer seemed as eternal and unpleasant as the roach problem. He was always there. Watching. Listening.
“Just hang in there, Opie,” my father said calmly on the other line. “It’s all going to work out. You’ll see.”
“Okay,” I said miserably, believing he was alluding to some master plan he was concocting to rescue me, something he couldn’t discuss over the phone.
I was still young enough to hope that he was going to show up one day and demand custody of me. I didn’t understand back then that though my father loved me, he wasn’t really father material. He didn’t have the strength, the selflessness it takes to be a real parent. Neither one of them did. But my mom at least wanted me with her—some of the time, anyway.
The conversation ended, and I went into my room to cry into my pillow.
“He’s not coming for you, you know.”
I turned, startled and embarrassed to see Marlowe standing there in the narrow doorway. He leaned against the frame, hands in the pockets of his faded, dirty jeans. He wasn’t