when Lily stayed home from school and the two of them lay on the living room floor without talking, just watching TV, Colleen looked for that painting. She couldn’t imagine what she’d done with it. She checked the house and the back yard, even the bushes. But it was gone—the painting and that patch of time marked by one phone call, the space between event and after.
The driver of the car kept in touch with them for months, called them, Lily especially, until Lily’s school psychologist insisted that it was unhealthy, that the man had been seen on school grounds. Lily, she said, was having inappropriate feelings. The psychologist was a pretty woman, one of those soft Southern types, who seemed, with every sentence, exuberant, like she was up for a game of tennis. As Colleen watched her lips move around the words inappropriate feelings, she couldn’t help but wonder why, clearly given the choice, this woman would want to think about other people’s problems all day.
Rick used to take Colleen to the Almost Home all the time, especially during football season, and so once things were settled—and after she quit her job as a respiratory therapist—it seemed natural to get a job there. It seemed more natural than to stop going. Plus, after working in a hospital for ten-odd years, waiting tables seemed fun, a little romantic even. Tons of artists were waiters. Not just actors, but all kinds of artists. Theoretically, she’d have more time to paint.
Maybe, though, it’d been a mistake. He wouldn’t go away.
Colleen did her best with damage control. The kitchen was a mess—bus tubs and trash overflowing. Everything felt sticky. Someone had spilled ketchup and it was everywhere, on the bar, smeared on the sides of the garnish tray, on what was left of the clean silverware. Colleen made the effort to get things done and done right, but, even more, she tried not to think about it.
There was a beautiful girl in her section, over at one of the fraternity-sorority tables. She sat in an elegant slouch swirling a Jack and Coke. Her hair was long and dark red and loose and she wore what all the girls were wearing: black boots, low-waisted thrift-store jeans, and an eighty-dollar white t-shirt with a cashmere cardigan looped around the neck. Even though it was freezing outside and you could see the gooseflesh on their arms when they came in, they kept the sweaters there. Like artificial hugs. This girl was more beautiful that the rest. Her skin had a Mediterranean tint and her eyes were sloped and serious, but with a spark. The kind that couldn’t be faked. Colleen hated when beautiful girls sat in her section. It was distracting. She wanted to stare at them; she wanted to see how they moved, find out what it was that made them so. As it turned out, the beautiful ones weren’t always the prettiest—this girl’s chin was too long, her forehead too wide—and it went the other way too. Lena, for instance, was pretty, really pretty. But she wasn’t beautiful. When they’d first met and become friends, Colleen had spent a good deal of time wondering why Lena wasn’t beautiful, trying to catch her from different sides. And Marna? Maybe. It was hard to define. She was watchable, the way she would sit beside the cash register, one foot propped on the sink, the other on the bar itself. She’d laugh, completely at ease, chomping her blue gum, not caring if anyone was looking up her nose or down her blouse—which they probably were. Not caring if she made a scene. Which she did and didn’t at the same time. And the thing with watching Marna was, it was never a separate event. You actually felt it, even if she was talking to someone else, not even looking in your direction—it was like she reflected something back, automatically.
Now, Lily was beautiful. Her long-limbed ease. How she moved through space, cutting it at any angle, unafraid of taking up too much of it. And her quick-change expressions, each a surprise. Colleen didn’t know where she’d gotten that. One minute she’d be considering you, really looking hard, and the next, in just a twitch of the mouth or chin or eye, it was all different. She’d gathered light, softened or brightened, gone somewhere else and back again. It was like you could peel away layer after layer and still find more. Beauty under beauty. Of course, Colleen was biased. But still.
Colleen wasn’t allowed to have Lily at the bar during her shifts anymore—Bill said it was bad for business and probably illegal besides. But then he lightened up a bit, as he always did, and hinted that he wouldn’t really care if Lily came in late at night, around last call, when people were too far gone, either literally or figuratively, to complain.
Fourteen going on fifteen was way too old for a babysitter—many girls Lily’s age were babysitters themselves. But Lily was a different case. She’d recently discovered boys and recently decided to be aggressive about it. Colleen couldn’t leave her alone, not for hours at a time, so on nights Marna was working and couldn’t have Lily over her place, Colleen paid one of Lily’s twenty-something cousins to keep an eye.
Beth would drop Lily here later. One-thirty or two. It was something to look forward to, anyway. And not just because Colleen wouldn’t have to pay Beth any longer, and not just because Colleen plain missed Lily, but also because the visions didn’t appear when Lily was around—as if her presence in the present was so powerful it crowded out the past.
Colleen ran down to the break room. She didn’t have the time but she did it anyhow, clomped down the stairs carrying table 16’s drinks. It was pointless really: if Marna had gone home, she wouldn’t pick up. But Colleen dialed the number—what else was there to do? The voice mail came on and Marna’s voice played. Then:
Beep.
“Hi, it’s Colleen. We were wondering where you were, and you know . . . if you could give us a call. The thing is, we’re slammed here, I mean, seriously, Marna, and we’re not sure why you walked off and all. If it’s something . . . if there’s something I can do . . . something . . . you know I’m here for you. . . . Anyway—”
Beep.
“—call us,” she finished into air.
She replaced the receiver in its cradle and stood there. Noise and movement thumped above. Nine tables wondered where their waitress was. Food was getting cold, drinks warm—everything meeting in the middle and waiting. Colleen stood still. She had to go back up, but she didn’t move. She stayed put and felt the moment stretch out.
It was more of a large closet than an actual break room. You could tell it was meant to store jackets and personal items, but Bill had managed to squeeze in a table, a few broken chairs, and a filthy love seat so familiar they all sat on it anyway. Above the love seat, in purple marker, someone had scrawled: Drink the water. The back wall was lined with lockers. Most were empty and the rest had been claimed informally by the wait and bar staff. Colleen hated being down here alone. It made her nervous ever since the time, maybe a year ago, she’d gone through all the lockers. It was past close and everyone else was hanging out upstairs in the almost-dark at table 14, as they often did, hiding from the front doors because it was illegal to be drinking after hours. Colleen had excused herself to fix a contact lens and found herself down here, facing the lockers, then opening them, one by one. Any minute, she’d expected, someone would appear for a jacket or a pack of cigarettes. But no one did, so she rifled through the lockers and took things, slipped them into her pockets and handbag. A crumpled baseball card, some lip balm, a flowered notepad, three coupons for amusement-park discount, a stand-up comedy cassette tape. Just odds and ends, nothing important—or at least she hadn’t thought so at the time. She did it for no reason at all, none of it was stuff she wanted. She just did it. A throwback, maybe, to her shoplifting college days. And no one had missed anything until Lena, of course Lena, threw hell because the baseball card had belonged to her grandfather and gave her luck. A lucky baseball card. Go figure. Well, Bill had sat them all down and everyone of course denied it—Colleen herself was so caught up in the uproar that even she grew indignant. How could someone do such a thing? Trust and camaraderie and all. She and Lena went out for beers that night and tried to guess who it might have been.
It still made her nervous to be here. Partly—and Colleen
