Dadaoism (An Anthology) Read online

  “Uh-huh?” Ryan’s bent kneecaps cracked.

  “She didn’t make it.”

  He had been waiting two years for the right moment to ask her, “So, did you leave Autumn Jewel there like that on purpose? Like, for me?”

  Dad told him more. Later on, Ryan would have all the details down. The mall, the baby in the back seat, some black ice—too early, it was November—and a Coke truck. Only the front of the van smashed, so Emmaline with bruises and a crushed leg.

  When he got off the phone with Dad, Ryan wanted to run back to Mike and pretend it was a normal Thursday, but his legs were too mushy to move.

  He said to Greg, “I’ve got to go home. My sister died.”

  “Oh, man,” Greg squeezed Ryan’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

  Ryan flinched at the warm pressure—Greg’s fingers shook even as they gripped—but didn’t move away. He didn’t know how to answer Greg, and didn’t feel like it, anyway. What was it that had kept Tara from leaving the mall five minutes earlier, before the Coke delivery?

  “Ryan?” Greg craned his head down and blocked Ryan’s view of the wall. “Buddy?”

  He would get nowhere wondering about that, and stopped after a few seconds. Later he might think about that more. But now he’d rather think about Tara’s room, and the books she’d left there. The room wouldn’t have changed, and the books wouldn’t have, either.

  “Ryan? Listen.” Greg’s hazel eyes were right on the level of Ryan’s. His eyebrows were knitted. “I’m stepping outside for a second. Just stay here, okay? I’ll be right back.”

  Ryan nodded, and Greg left. Ryan stared at the wall again, and decided that, as soon as he got home, he’d run straight upstairs, lock Tara’s door behind him, and then just sit and drown in the sweet musty paper smell. He wouldn’t even have to read any of the books. Just being there would be still and safe enough.

  Greg came back in with the girls’ RA from upstairs, plus Chelsea, another freshman, who had Calculus and Spanish with Ryan.

  Chelsea took his hand and patted his shoulder and told him she knew he’d get through this. Ryan said “Thanks.” Then she left.

  While Greg got on the Greyhound website, the girls’ RA sat with Ryan on the futon and asked him if he wanted to talk.

  “No, it’s okay.” He thought about the white trunk under the window—the one stuffed with papers and notebooks and more books—and holding Autumn Jewel against his chest, something he hadn’t done since he was fourteen and Jillian Turner had gotten all her friends to mock him for asking her out for ice cream. Holding that book that’d brought Autumn to life, that made Autumn always the same, was almost as good as holding Autumn herself.

  He thought about Autumn, and Chelsea came back in carrying a strange blue duffle bag.

  “Mike said your suitcases are in storage,” Chelsea said, setting it down. “So we used his. He’s doing your backpack.” She sat on Ryan’s other side. “I put your suit on the top. I tried to keep it nice.”

  “Thank you, Chelsea,” the girls’ RA said.

  “Yeah, thanks.” Ryan’s mind was so far away from his mouth that he thought he actually smiled at her. Not long after that last night holding the book, he’d promised himself he’d get over his weird obsession with that stupid thing—no wonder real girls didn’t like him.

  The girls’ RA and Chelsea held his hands until eight twenty-five, when it was time to leave for the bus station. Greg drove him, Mike came along, and on the way they drove through somewhere and Greg bought him a chicken sandwich. Ryan watched the dark blue-grey outside his window.

  At one point, Mike twisted around from the front seat and told Ryan how his grandma had died that summer, and he’d been a pallbearer for the first time ever, but his voice trailed off. Ryan just thanked him, too, and waited for him to turn back around. They were all quiet for the rest of the drive.

  Ryan stared out the blue-grey window and couldn’t quite make himself stop thinking. She’s never coming home, the baby’s going to be crying. Poor kid. He didn’t want to see her. They got to the station at about nine ten.

  Greg and Mike waited with him until his bus came at nine forty. Ryan still hadn’t even tried to eat his sandwich. Greg got a bottle of water out of the vending machine, and said to make sure he ate on the bus, even if he didn’t want to. “You’ll need fuel.”

  Mike tapped Ryan’s backpack with the toe of his sneaker. “Your iPod’s in the front. And I left your Calc book in.”

  Ryan stood and lifted it. The weight hung comfortably from his back. Unlike Tara, he’d always liked math. “Thanks.”

  After the bus door closed behind him and he walked all the way to the back even though the seats were mostly empty, Ryan imagined the two guys driving back and talking about how much this must suck for him. He’d almost sell his soul to be Mike.

  When the bus got on the highway at about ten, the view outside the window was just like the inside of his head. Black, fuzzy, and off. Like rubbing a cat the wrong way.

  At some point he ate, because Greg said to, but only managed half the sandwich. His throat wouldn’t take more. He threw the rest out the only time he left the bus, at a station that looked new from the outside, to use to bathroom. It stank in there.

  Ryan never touched his backpack, and barely shut his eyes even to blink.

  For a few hours he told himself that he’d actually lost Tara several times already. First the loud girl who’d taught him to color went away, and was replaced by the one in the black camo jacket who would spend whole afternoons browsing used bookstores and come home with her canvas satchel packed full. That girl didn’t have enough shelf space for her collection, and every time Ryan eased open her door to say, “It’s dinner time,” or “Uncle Bill’s on the phone, and you have to talk to him,” the stacks on her floor had grown taller or multiplied, so that they looked like a maze of little skyscrapers. (“Dear Lord, Tara,” Mom would say, “this room is a firetrap.” True, it did usually smell kind of smoky in there, even when Tara wasn’t burning incense.)

  Then, one summer, Dad assembled three new white bookshelves, and a slightly different Tara, with a second set of earrings in each ear, had arranged all the books according to her own set of genres. The bookshelf for “Real Trash” was the tallest, and stood nearest the door.

  Then that Tara vanished off to college, leaving Ryan with a quiet house in which to focus on his fourth grade homework. The friends he brought home were quiet, too.

  But every two months a new Tara, who seemed taller than the past three, would sweep in the door, soft frizzy brown hair (much thicker and paler than his) streaming from under her black felt hat. The basement would explode with the noise of her friends in the late afternoons. Some days she would still spend hours out at one of her bookstores, but now mostly came home empty handed. But not always.

  “This one,” College Tara said to Ryan when she was picking him up from the pool the summer before he started sixth grade, “is so worth it. I read about it online. It’s ridiculous. Here. Don’t get it wet.”

  He accepted the book—it was off-white, with a worn binding—and held it well away from his damp chest. He saw that on the cover, like on most of Tara’s Real Trash books, there was a girl with long hair (reddish-orange) and a dress (dark green) with weird short poofy sleeves. But there was no guy, just her. She was running toward Ryan, grabbing her flowing skirt with both hands and staring at him like she was scared (of him?). A few brown and yellow leaves swirled in the background as she kicked them up behind her. The raised gold title said, Autumn Jewel.

  “I wish I could get the original cover,” Tara said. “Like, that dress is way off, ‘cause it’s actually set in the sixties. And she shouldn’t really be big like that.” She glanced over at the book as she swung the car in the driveway. Ryan looked at the girl’s chest—her boobs were spilling out of her dress—squinted up his eyes and pretended his sister wasn’t sitting next to him. “Bitch is skinny.”

  “You’re skinny,
too,” Ryan said automatically, as he flipped the book open and read the first lines. I was born in the depths of November. I’m told my eyes out-lit the sun.

  Weird, he thought, but kept reading—about the girl’s small house, younger sisters, and sweet, tired, still-pregnant mother—until Tara turned off the ignition and snatched the book away.

  “Gosh. You’re not supposed to like it.” She smacked his almost-dry shoulder with the spine.

  “Ow. Why’d you show me, then?”

  “Because I was excited I found it. Now go shower before you get, like, butt rot or something.”

  “You just got that from The Simpsons yesterday.” Ryan flung his towel out the door before jumping down himself, his flip-flops hitting the garage floor with a loudly satisfying smack. “‘A case of severe butt rot…’”

  “Yeah, whatever. Shoo.” Tara, still with her seatbelt on, waved him away. Inside he hopped in the shower, and almost forgot about the new book.

  A few weeks later Tara, who wouldn’t be quite the same when she came home again, went back to school. She had read a good way into Autumn Jewel while sitting in the garage, devoured the rest in the next two days, and then left it, upright, in an empty space on the Real Trash shelf. After she had gone Ryan, who’d wondered for a while exactly what made a book Real Trash and now really wanted to know what that chick on the cover was so afraid of, read it in chunks whenever he was home alone. Autumn—Jewel was her middle name, for her sparkling eyes—narrated her own story. He felt like she was talking just to him. And her story was fucked up (she had plenty to be scared of, including most of her own family), so it was like she must trust him, he thought.

  The new Tara was home less often, and usually wore skirts. Then she was gone, and a Tara with a neat bun and blue sweater packed up most of her room, including the only the books she had room for in her new place, and moved into an apartment two hours away. She left about three-fourths of her book collection behind. Ryan saw this Tara every other Sunday, at brunch with their parents at the Sunflower Bistro, and she usually had an attachment named Josh along. Engaged Tara was relatively quiet, but Josh was even quieter. He smiled shyly every time she opened her mouth.

  By this time Ryan had accepted that the sister who had lived in his house—the last Tara, plus the others before her—was gone. He was over it. He was focusing on school, he was hanging out with the guys at his lunch table, he was reconciling Reproductive Health Unit with his real life, he was fulfilling his duties as Vice President of Physics Club, he was figuring out college, and throughout it all he had a refuge in the room Tara had left behind. She had other books besides Real Trash—two of her sections were named “Bizarro Mystery” and “Russkie Bashing Spy”—and sometimes he’d branch out, but no book got to him like Autumn’s. Autumn, though she’d been telling him her story for years, never changed. Even when he started laughing sometimes, about the way her eyes out-lit the sun, he still liked it. Just for himself.

  The Thanksgiving before she got married, Tara came in the room unexpectedly while he was reading. Ryan was fifteen. He was embarrassed and jumped up to hide the book, but she’d already seen it.

  “Um.” Engaged Tara was way more awkward about some things than she used to be. “You’re reading that one?”

  He looked at the floor, his face hot. “Yeah.”

  “I mean, that’s fine,” she said. “But, well—oh, God. Okay. The sex in that one’s really bad.”

  “Yeah.” He usually skipped the sex scenes. Especially the creepy one when her cousin came on to her. He knew Autumn well enough that, when he wanted to, he could make up his own. “I know.”

  “Okay.” Tara rushed over to her old dresser and found a long abandoned pair of nylons. “Just so you know, if you want something better, most of these are, well, from the girl’s point of view, but...” She waved her hand at the tall shelf as she headed out. But then she stopped, glanced at the book in his hands and then stared at his bent head.

  Ryan looked up.

  Tara smiled slightly. “Oh, Autumn. She’s addictive, isn’t she?”

  He nodded. Then, because she was here and they were talking about it, he asked, “What’s camel?”

  Tara got it, of course. “Like the dress coat she’s always putting on?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s beige wool. Like that jacket Mom used to wear to Mass sometimes.”

  “Oh.” For years Ryan had been picturing little embroidered camels marching around the hem and cuffs. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” Tara’s smile grew, and she left. That was the last time he ever saw her without Josh.

  Then Tara had her hair cut short when she was about two months pregnant.

  “It was time.” She explained at brunch that week. “It was just dead weight using up all Bug’s nutrients, you know?” She patted her stomach, and Josh smiled down at his eggs Benedict.

  So long-haired Tara had been gone for years. She’d been briefly replaced by short-haired Tara who always showed up with the shy guy and the noisy bassinette.

  What Ryan was thinking now on the bus, was that losing this last Tara was pretty much like losing all the others. He’d been through that before. The only difference was that this time a new one wouldn’t be popping up to take her place. Unless Emmaline counted, though she wouldn’t remember any of the Taras, and if no Tara was there to raise her… but he shoved that thought away. Josh would remember, after all. He wouldn’t let the kid forget her mother, and, after a while, when everyone had healed up enough that contact would be bearable, Ryan could help with that part, too.

  Tara was gone, but as Ryan kept trying to tell himself as the bus drove on, that really, really, really wasn’t anything new. And at the very least, Autumn would never go.

  A little after two in the morning, his phone rang. Ryan talked to Dad for a few minutes, heard that Josh was sitting up at the hospital with Emmaline, who was still in a lot of pain, and that Mom was spending the night there too and didn’t want to leave. Dad would pick Ryan up at the station. “Close your eyes, son, okay? Try to relax for just a while.”

  Ryan hung up. I don’t want it to be just a while. It would be better if the ride never ended. Even though it was dark and boring, and his stomach kind of hurt. Even though he sometimes wondered if he was just dreaming about being on the bus, and thought that if he forced himself awake he’d be back in a grey padded chair at the first station.

  Sleet was grazing his window when the bus pulled into the stop before his. Most people were asleep. No one was getting off. Ryan laid his forehead against the nice cold pane, and watched people get on. Two middle-aged guys in jeans and windbreakers, a fat lady with a crispy blond perm… he closed his eyes. The bus was still half-empty, so he was surprised when he felt the seat sink down with the weight of someone next to him. Whoever it was radiated cold, like the window: Ryan liked the feeling.

  He opened his eyes quickly, meaning to see what the person looked like before he pretended to sleep, but her smile caught his attention so hard that he jerked his head up, and couldn’t help but smile back.

  She was pale, and a redhead, but didn’t have freckles. Her cheeks were flushed almost hot pink from the wind. She was unwinding a green scarf from her shining hair, which was pinned away from her face and poured a long way down her back. She wore a beige wool coat, knee length and belted, with cuffed sleeves. A green pleated skirt swished around her calves as she crossed her ankles. Ryan looked at her eyes, and even in the dark he could see they were clear and brown. He thought they were dotted with gold.

  He thought, Depths of November. Out-lit the sun. Camel.

  Then he thought, No way. Not possible.

  He said, “Hi.” My breath tastes like a chicken corpse.

  “Hi.” She kept smiling at him as she folded her scarf in her lap, tucking it under her brown bag. He felt cold air, from evaporating sleet, waft out from her face and wool shoulders and arms. Again, it was a nice sensation. “Is it all right if I sit her
e?”

  There was something shaky and nervous, he thought, in her low soft voice. But that was probably because she’d probably never been on a bus trip before. She was so overdressed, and her skirt was so long. She must usually fly. Maybe her parents were really rich, and she was kind of sheltered. That reason for her being nervous made sense. Not the other one that had popped into his head as soon as he saw her hair and coat. “Yeah, no problem.”

  “Thank you.” She settled back in her seat, removed her brown leather gloves finger by finger, then tucked them into her bag and clasped her hands in her lap. Ryan watched her, glanced down at her brown low-heeled shoes with the straps, and told himself that he was nuts, and he had to stop thinking that she didn’t belong on this bus, in this year, how her eyes shone and how no girls his age wore skirts that long now…

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you were asleep.”

  “I wasn’t asleep.” He pushed himself off his seat with his hands, then dropped back down. His head felt a little clearer. “So it’s fine.”

  “Good,” she said, then quit smiling. “It’s late to be awake, though.”

  “Late for you, too.” Ryan leaned back, sat on his hands. His elbows made giant, awkward angles that didn’t seem to fit comfortably into his own space. He didn’t want to touch her. She might break, or melt.

  “I know.” She stared at the seatback in front of her. “I’d expected everyone to be sleeping now.”

  Damn, it was just too perfect. You were counting on everyone sleeping, so no one would catch you. He tried, but not all that hard, to stop himself from thinking it. So that no one at that school would notice you were gone. So that no one would bother you now. He had to swallow to keep it all from bursting out. When he finally thought of something to say that wouldn’t totally freak a normal girl into changing seats, his voice was at first too loud.

  “I guess—sorry, I guess,” he almost whispered, “I don’t usually sleep on the bus. I mean, I’ve done this, like, twice, but it’s been in the day time.”

  “Me too,” she said.