Goodbye, Sweet Girl Read online

  Dedication

  For Megan, Kelly M., and Rebecca:

  The women who opened the window.

  Epigraph

  First thing we should do

  if we ever meet again

  is make a cage of our bodies where we can place

  whatever still shines

  —NICK FLYNN, “FORGETTING SOMETHING”

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  1: Blue

  2: Queen of Swords

  3: The Perfect Family

  4: Runaway

  5: Would I Rather?

  6: Saved

  7: I Love You

  8: Demolition

  9: That Hot, Dry Summer

  10: Take Me to the River

  11: Broken Things

  12: Playlist for a Broken Heart

  13: His Ghost in Her Bones

  14: Christmas Baby

  15: What I Didn’t Write

  16: A Hard Heart

  17: The Archivist

  18: It Will Look Like a Sunset

  19: An Incomplete List of Reasons He Was Violent

  20: I Just Don’t Know What to Believe

  21: Goodbye, Sweet Girl

  Epilogue: The House in the Hollow

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  IN A TOWN built on a hill, in a state full of sawed-off mountains where muddy roads curved along polluted streams, metal deposits in the water gleamed like steely rainbows, and the muted sunlight filtered through shadowy trees, lived an archivist. His was a job of remembrance.

  Mine was a job of forgetting.

  On his phone my husband, Caleb, the archivist, had a collection of self-portraits. Each looked the same, with only variations in his clothing, his facial hair, or the background. In one of the portraits he stood in front of our bookshelf in a plaid collared shirt, unrelenting eyes staring firmly into the camera and his long but neatly trimmed beard masking a frown. In another he sat on the couch in front of the living room window. He wore a blue hooded sweatshirt this time, and his face was clean-shaven, but the expression was the same. Unrelenting. Impenetrable.

  At night, as we cuddled on the couch, my head on his shoulder, a blanket draped over our legs, he would scroll through the dozens of photos. “Why do you take all of these?” I teased him.

  “I’m pretending they’re my author photo,” he said. “I want to look serious.”

  This behavior seemed strange to me, but he often had inexplicable behaviors. I laughed, grabbed the phone, scrolled through the lot. “They look more like mug shots,” I said, tossing it back in his lap.

  Later, he told me the truth. He took the photos as documentation. He took the photos to document his misery. And his shame.

  IN MORGANTOWN, THE West Virginia college town where we lived, there was a twelve-story dorm named Summit Hall: a sterile box of metal and windows. Within that box, eighteen- to twenty-two-year-olds got high, lost their virginity, studied for exams, cried to their mothers out of homesickness, slept through the long days, and partied through the short nights. They did these things in rooms stacked on top of each other, in a contained mess of excitement, experimentation, joy, and loss.

  Underneath all of these rooms, on the first floor, was an apartment—a beautiful cage—with polished wood floors, chrome pendant lights, and leather furniture. It was an apartment designed for a faculty family, the “resident faculty leaders,” or, as I liked to call us, “Dorm Mom and Dad.” It was the apartment where I had lived for only four months with my husband of eight years, Caleb, and our seven-year-old son, Reed. It was the apartment where my husband and I made love quietly, hoping not to be overheard by the girls who lived on the floor above us. It was the apartment where I tucked our little boy into his bed, wrapped his blanket around his shoulders, said, “I love you, buddy.” He murmured, “I love you too,” shutting his eyes against the dark night.

  I closed the door to his room and went to find Caleb in the next room. Leaning into his chest, I said, “I love you too.” He looked down at me, smiled, and kissed me.

  Our son was so proud to be living in the dorm. None of his friends got to walk into a building full of college students who doted on them. Everyone who met our son—a sweet, intelligent, and funny boy with a superhero obsession—fell in love with him, and the college students were no exception. At his birthday party, he was lavished with presents: Pokémon cards from the eighteen-year-old boys, who still loved Pokémon themselves, and board games from the girls, who all wanted to come to the apartment and play with him.

  At school, when he had to draw a picture of his home, even though we had spent most of his childhood in a small house on the other side of town, he drew a picture of the dorm. He drew a tall rectangle filled with square windows. In front of the building stood Reed, Caleb, our two dogs, and me. At the bottom of the page, he wrote “Welcome to Summit Hall!” We are all smiling, even the dogs.

  ON THE DAY of Reed’s party, I pinned a blue ribbon to his costume that read “Birthday Boy!” I decorated the apartment with streamers, confetti, and a circus-style popcorn machine. I put out red-and-white movie-style cartons for the popcorn, baked a dozen birthday cupcakes, filled bowls with various kinds of candy for decorating, and placed clues all over the dormitory for a massive, building-wide scavenger hunt for the kids.

  In the morning, even though I still had all of these things to do, I didn’t want the day to start. I could tell it was going to be a bad one. I dressed slowly, not wanting to leave the safety of my bedroom, but unable to remain there. We had spent the night before cleaning the apartment, but I still needed to clean the main bathroom. I poured myself a cup of coffee, then moved to the bathroom and started scrubbing the counters quickly. Caleb came and stood in the doorway. His eyes on me. I didn’t look at him. Just kept scrubbing.

  “Can you bring me the toilet brush from the other bathroom?” I said, without looking up.

  He left, returned with the toilet brush, kneeled down by the toilet, and started scrubbing, moving the brush back and forth in angry movements.

  “You don’t need to do that,” I said. “Just leave it there. I’ll get it.”

  He took the brush and threw it against the wall, splashing toilet water all over the floor. I flinched. The dogs, who usually followed us from room to room, crept out into our son’s room. Caleb turned to me and screamed, “I knew you were going to do this! The apartment is fine as is. It’s never enough for you.”

  I put down my sponge and ran out of the room. I knew what was coming. My counselor had told me to “exit the situation” when he was like that. I grabbed my keys and phone, but he chased me, yanked my phone out of my hand, and threw it against the wall, shattering it. It was one of many phones he had broken in the previous year. I still had the keys in my hand. I eyed the door. He saw me. If I could get out the door, I could make a run for it. The dorm was closed for Thanksgiving break, but three of the resident assistants were at the front desk until noon. He would never hit me in front of them.

  I eyed the door again, tried to step around him. Caleb moved in front of me, stretching his arms out wide. Then I did it. I ducked under his arm, opened the door, and ran as fast as I could to safety.

  Except that he had followed me. He had followed me, even though the resident assistants were there. They stood at the desk, smiled when they saw me, and then paused, faces frozen. I raced by as he chased me. “Come back here!” he yelled. “Come back, you fucking bitch.”

  I cried out “Call the police!” to the resident assistants, then though
t, Oh my God, did I really say that? Did I just say that?

  They stared. “Really?” a young man asked, reaching for the phone slowly. He couldn’t tell if it was a sick joke or not, but it was too late for me to answer. I was already to the hall. Caleb was in pursuit in his socks. We made it to the street before we both stopped. Before it sank in that we had an audience.

  I could tell Caleb wasn’t going to hurt me now. He looked around him, shoulders slumped. “It’s over now,” he said.

  I panicked. “I can fix this,” I said. “I can fix this.” We went back in the building, into the basement this time, through separate doors. I cried “I’ll fix this,” and headed upstairs.

  I spoke to the resident assistants, shoulders shaking, and started sobbing. “I’m sorry,” I said. “He’s taking medication for his moods, and he’s having problems. Side effects.” This was true. “Please don’t tell anyone. I know I don’t have the right to ask you that, but please don’t tell anyone.”

  One of the young women hugged me, so sweetly. “Of course,” she said.

  The young man looked at our apartment. “Is Reed in there?” he asked.

  I panicked. “Yes,” I said.

  “Do you want me to go and sit with him?” he asked.

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  I let him into the apartment and went downstairs to find Caleb. He was standing by the vending machines. He looked so tiny, so vulnerable. I couldn’t believe what I had done to him. I had ruined his life. He would surely lose his job now.

  “I fixed it,” I said. I hugged him. He started sobbing and laid his head on my shoulder. The cloth of my shirt was soaked within seconds. He had never been vulnerable like that with me before. I held him tightly. “It’s okay,” I said. “I fixed it. Let’s just go back upstairs.”

  I took him upstairs, then went to Reed’s room. The resident assistant was sitting on his bed with him, playing Legos. Reed seemed oblivious. “We’re okay,” I said. “Thank you.”

  The resident assistant stood close to me, not yet a man, no longer a boy. He looked at Caleb, standing in the next room. “Do you need anything?” he asked.

  Yes, I wanted to say. I need you to stop him. I need you to tell him to quit hurting me. I need you to protect me. I’m so scared. I’m just so scared.

  But I didn’t say that. “I’m fine,” I said.

  He left, shooting Caleb a glance as he walked by, but Caleb wouldn’t look at him.

  Once he was gone, I broke down crying. Caleb was still so angry, I could tell. We had guests coming, and I knew I needed to clean myself up, put some ice cubes on my red and puffy eyes, cover my under-eye circles with concealer, change my damp shirt, practice smiling. My seven-year-old birthday boy was so excited.

  Reed played quietly on his bed. It was what he always did during these rages. He stayed there as long as was needed. I went into the hallway, and Reed followed me. He moved in front of me, and I looked down at him. He reached out hesitantly, put his hands on my stomach, and looked into my eyes searchingly in a way he never had before. He was growing up, and his eyes disclosed to me that he knew. He knew what was happening.

  “Mom?” he asked, still holding me gently, eyes still attached to mine.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” I said, reaching down to smooth his thick hair over his forehead. “I’m okay.”

  “I don’t like it when the dogs climb into bed with me because they’re scared,” he said.

  He looked so much like I had when I was a child, the same strawberry hair and big blue eyes. I thought of myself as a little girl in Idaho, a sensitive little girl who witnessed the sadness of the adults around her but who never imagined that her own future would contain so much heartbreak. In that moment, I knew. I knew we had to leave.

  1

  Blue

  WHEN I WAS a little girl, my brother, Glen, had night terrors and sleepwalked; he also had chronic migraines. My mother spent her nights focused on his moon face, eyes creased with worry, dabbing cold rags on his head, guiding him back to bed, holding his shaking shoulders.

  I had my night terrors, too, but they were silent. I woke in the middle of the night while the ghosts, the fear of everything that was out of my control, pressed down into my chest. I heaved and shook, but couldn’t scream. I could feel them right above me; I could see them floating in corners. They never went away, even when I awoke.

  Once Glen bolted down the hallway, screaming, and I watched from my doorway as my mother grabbed his hand and guided him back to his room. She couldn’t wake him when he was like that. He looked at me—eyes wide open, the whites shot through with red—but dead asleep, he couldn’t see me. I was invisible to them both.

  One cold winter morning, I woke early and looked out the window above my bed into the darkness. The ice on the window cracked and splintered as I pressed my fingers into the frost, the tips leaving steamy imprints in tiny dots. I leaned in and made a shadowy ghost by forcing my cheeks into the glass and blowing through my lips. My ghost stared back at me as I pulled the blanket around my shoulders. I didn’t want to get out of bed until the house had warmed, so I huddled under the covers and waited until my father had stoked the fire enough in the wood stove.

  Every morning I listened for the sound of the radio and the fire crackling. School was only canceled if the temperature dropped to twenty below zero, and this would happen for days on end. When the deejay, “Leo the Lion,” a middle-aged Mormon with a booming voice, announced that school was canceled again, I smiled to myself before jumping out of bed to play outside. The weather never stopped me; I wasn’t afraid of anything but ghosts.

  MY NEIGHBOR DANNY didn’t like the cold, and this was a cold day. His aunt who he lived with was a lunch lady, and the family didn’t have a wood stove. They couldn’t keep their house very warm. My family was not rich, barely even middle-class, but my mother was a registered nurse, and my father worked for the US Forest Service, so compared to Danny’s family, we had a lot.

  For a while Danny couldn’t come over anymore, because he had tried to touch what my parents referred to as my “private parts.” Months earlier, Danny and I had been on the side of the yard where my parents kept their vegetable garden. We were hidden behind a row of tomato plants when he asked me to show him my “private parts.” I didn’t want to, but he told me that adults do it all the time. The older neighbor boys snickered in Danny’s yard below, pointing at us. I had the feeling I was being tricked, but I was too young to know how, and I never turned down a dare, so I slowly raised my skirt, and then he dropped his pants.

  His own “private parts” just hung there—pink and soft. I couldn’t look away. He leaned his hips forward and said that we should rub our privates together. I stepped back quickly, because I really didn’t want to do that. Just then my mother came rushing around the corner, her arms fluttering around her head like butterflies. She yanked my skirt down and told Danny, “GO HOME AND NEVER COME OVER ANYMORE.” She hurried me inside the house, and then lectured me about how I should never let boys see my privates—no matter what. I nodded my head with a blank stare.

  Trouble wasn’t new to me. I was the difficult child. My brother, six years my senior, was the sweet and honest one. I never heard my mother yell at Glen like she yelled at me. I had a fury in me, always wanting things I couldn’t have—a later bedtime, more friends, a different family. Once I chased my brother with an ice skate raised above my head. He locked himself in the bathroom, and I jammed the ice skate into the wooden door, sliding the blade down and leaving a gash that showed the lighter wood underneath. I was ashamed later, but I never let on that I was. I didn’t want them to think I was sorry.

  “She’s got that redheaded temper,” everybody said about me. My mother didn’t like that, because she was a redhead too. “People make redheads like that,” she said, “by the way they treat them.” She may have been right, because she was just like me. She never backed down from a fight.

  THE DAY BEFORE he tried to see my privates
, Danny chased me around the house with a knife. He threw my doll in the mud, so I pushed him. Girl or not, I was ready to fight, but then he pulled a knife out of his pocket and said he was going to cut me. I could see in his eyes that he meant what he said. I ran as fast as I could, making three full laps around the house while screaming for Glen to help me. My brother was on the deck with his friends, and they were ignoring me as usual. I was pretty fast, could usually outrun any of the boys, but I was tiring, and Danny was gaining ground on me. I knew he was going to stab me. That he wasn’t kidding. There was a cruelty in his eyes, and it wasn’t like my anger, which burned in my chest but usually ended in tears and a trip to my bedroom. Danny’s rage was something more.

  Finally Glen stepped in, grabbed Danny by the shirt, and told him to leave me alone. Then Glen pushed me on my shoulder, hard, and called me a wimp. “He wasn’t going to hurt you,” he said.

  I stood there with my shoulder stinging while this little knot in my stomach burned its way into the back of my throat. The burning was somewhere between anger and sadness. Glen didn’t understand. He would always be bigger than me. He would always be stronger. I could be the toughest little girl on the planet, but I was still just a girl. I knew my mother wouldn’t believe me, so I didn’t tell her about Danny trying to stab me or Glen watching me squirm before he stepped in to help. I was afraid of Danny and his knife, but not enough to risk being called a liar. I might have been good at running away, but, even then, I wasn’t good at asking for help.

  AT THE SAME time, I knew I needed to be nice to Danny because his dad was dying. His own mother had abandoned them. Danny had lived with his dad in the house next to us, but when his dad got too sick, Danny moved in with his aunt down the street. Danny lived there with his brother, Wade, his sister, Bambi, his aunt, and his grandpa, who had Alzheimer’s. He and his brother practically lived to come to our house to play basketball and eat all of my father’s elk jerky.

  Earlier that winter, we had come home from church and found Danny trying to cook a pizza he’d stolen out of the freezer in the garage over a fire in the backyard. His fire wasn’t burning very well, though, and it just left a pool of melted snow. The pizza was half frozen, half soggy, and I thought that was the dumbest thing I’d ever seen anyone do. I thought my parents would be furious, but they weren’t angry. They just brought him in the house and made him a ham sandwich. My parents cared about Danny in a way that I never fully understood. When they saw him, they only saw the vulnerable child. They didn’t see the kid with the knife.