Stateway's Garden Read online

  Steph said she’d never heard me talk without my words seeming like they were in a who-hits-the-air-first race. We drove another fifteen miles east on Interstate 94.

  The motel we stopped in had neither a name nor big sign across its roof. The sign was adjacent to the office door. Its letters were bold and pasted to what looked like cardboard. The building was nothing close to shady or scary, though, and had five floors. In fact, considering how brightly it was lit, most would have assumed it a nice place to spend the night. The stairs leading to each level were outside the building, opposite each other and wrapping around corners that connected to long ramps acting as porches. They actually reminded me of those in Stateway. They charged twenty-five dollars per night at the hotel and we got a room on the third floor. Our room number was C6.

  Steph never made motions showing she was nervous or in any way concerned. Now that I remember, she was the one who did the talking, paid for the room, opened the door, unpacked a couple items from her suitcase, and sat on the bed like she was in her own bedroom.

  “It’s nice here,” she said, opening her palm and spreading it along the cheap bedspread. I remember there were cigarette burns on it, placed evenly apart like someone used a protractor for measurement.

  I stared at her hands, at the fresh skin shaded with some flush of the sun, at her eyes, at her thin frame. She was all that a city full of ambitious men could want. I had to keep a place in her life for me. I knew then that Stuffy Stephanie Worthington was going to be something big. Bigger than me. All I wanted was to keep her happy with who I was, to surprise her with the small things I could, and maybe she’d continue loving me.

  “Come sit on the bed,” she said in that controlled tone. But I stood, unconsciously rejecting her.

  Our motel room had low ceilings, the walls were painted this off stain of orange, orange and red mixed, with a blue, four-wheeled chair in the corner. There was a smaller-size television propped on a stand. I immediately went to turn it on.

  “Come sit next to me, Jacob,” Steph repeated. “Please.” My legs moved on their own toward the bed. She began looking around the room. “It feels different to be somewhere and it’s only us.” I sat softly on the mattress. “Really good,” she said. “We’re always sneaking. For once, it’s like we’re not rushed.”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean.”

  “Are you happy with me, Jacob?”

  “I love you, Stephanie, you know that.”

  “That’s not the same thing.”

  “What you mean, then?”

  “See,” she continued and her shoulders relaxed. “Auntie Renee told me that you’re supposed to be happy with your person, with who you’re with. She said she’s never been happy with any man. Ever.” My eyes lifted. “That’s why she likes you, Jacob, ’cause you make me happy.”

  “I try, that’s all I want to do.”

  “Auntie says you’re good for me, that you’ll keep me grounded ’cause you’re humble.”

  My arms opened and I pulled Steph close for a hug. Her ribs poked from her body. I knew then that she’d begun “dieting” to lose more weight. She gave me a kiss somewhere close to my ear, and stood. Steph walked to the other side of the room. There was a small wood dresser with an almost expensive, smooth-surfaced dresser to the left of it with a connecting mirror. The mirror was large, about six feet long. She stared at her face in the glass, using the first two fingers from each hand to separate her skin in small sections.

  “I have really nice skin, baby.” She almost shouted it because of her excitement. “Sometimes, I think I can get it even better.”

  I didn’t reply. I dug in my pocket for some loose items I wanted to make sure I’d remembered.

  “Do you think my nose is boring?” she asked. Stuffy always had issues with the shape of her nose. “Once I make some money, I’m going to get it fixed.”

  “I didn’t tell you the other surprise, Steph.”

  “What other surprise?” She turned and faced me, fingers still looking as though they were painfully pulling at her skin. “What is it?”

  “We aren’t going to the park in the morning,” I said, trying to build tension with my voice. “We’re going to drive to Indianapolis and stay there a couple of days.”

  “In Indiana?”

  “Yeah, Indianapolis.”

  “You are not serious, Jacob, you’re not!”

  “We’ll be on the road in the morning, I bought a map and everything, been studying it three days.” Steph’s fingers dropped from her face and her skin shifted back into position. “I figured it could be a good birthday present for you, a graduation present for us both, what you think?”

  “I think Auntie Renee is right about you.”

  Steph walked to the suitcase and pulled two cups from it, one straw, and a big bottle of clear booze I didn’t recognize. Like me, she hardly ever drank at that time. She had a long grin across her face and immediately took two strong make-you-wince hits of the liquor, straight from the bottle’s mouth. Her eyes squinted. Those lips were shining. And after about four drinks apiece Steph began undressing. She took off her clothes like they were hot coals burning against her skin. I moved to the other side of the bed, still reaching my hands deep into the pocket. I grabbed a thin strip of aluminum foil and a pack of chewing gum. Then I glanced back at Steph. She was just standing there, stiffly, staring at me, maybe even posing, totally naked, yep, naked, like only a teenaged boy could imagine, and shaven as clean as prepuberty. Her cup of booze was in her left hand and the straw lay on the bed, unused. She took more quick pulls and sips of the drink like it was hot chocolate.

  That was the first time I saw it: the gloss of her mouth.

  Drinks would simply glue themselves to her mouth, some in the corners, a bit at its purse, the remainder dripping from the bottom. It was the most delicate thing I’d seen at the time. I thought about giving Steph a kiss, but my hands were full. I ran them across my nose, sniffing ever so slightly. When I stood, I snatched the straw from the bed and began walking to the bathroom. Although I was also almost completely naked, I didn’t take a look at Steph. I didn’t have the confidence to. I was on my way to fix that.

  “I already know, Jacob,” she said from nowhere.

  “Already know what?”

  “I know what’s in your hand and I know what you been doing.” The sluggishness from the liquor made Steph’s body spin in a swirl when I tried to focus on her.

  “It’s nothing, just something to do on weekends, for fun, to feel better.” I blinked my eyes slowly.

  “I’ve known it since you first started.”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  I moved to the bathroom and shut the door. No sooner than I’d sectioned my helping across the sink, and placed the straw in my hand, she began knocking at the door.

  “I wanna come in, Jacob. Let me in.”

  Everything inside me said no. My instincts said: Curse her out. Deadbolt the lock. Don’t respond. But even after coughing on one line, that first one, the body begins feeling as if it can do anything: jump fifty floors from the Amoco Building and land on your feet, smash through Stateway concrete with open palms, lift two-ton trucks with your legs. Surely I’d be able to control Steph.

  When the door opened she was right there, drink in hand, wobbling left to right like we were on a sailboat. She took another sip. There was the lip gloss. I stood in the doorway gazing, but blocking her view from a side of me she’d never seen previously. Steph ducked under my arm and quickly moved to the sink. She opened her hands—fingers completely spread—and held on to the sides of the wall and sink for balance. I didn’t even move. Steph lowered her head to the left side of the sink’s rim, where one line remained, and looked at me. My mouth didn’t move either, not in the sligh
test. Inside I screamed at her, screamed so deafening her eardrums should’ve exploded in sixty-two and a half pieces. Nearly thirty-five seconds passed.

  “Don’t,” I finally said in a voice that barely picked up wind. Was too late anyway.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I saw this on Miami Vice.”

  She drifted and fell to where the bathtub was, bumping her back against the porcelain. Her eyes closed. I wondered if she had fallen asleep. I hoped, at worst, she’d fallen asleep.

  The colors, shapes, and images of the room shifted slowly, then with speed, they grew moderate: liquor and cocaine.

  Steph opened her eyes. “I wanted to do something different,” she said. “I feel right now like I can move one of them ugly buildings back at home. Knock them all the way down. Yeah, Jacob. I’d knock them things down with only my fists.” She fired both of her tightly closed hands to the air. Steph then extended her right hand to the sink and grabbed the drink all in one motion, taking two of those hot-chocolate sips. She put the drink down and stood. She then gently lifted the toilet seat, placed her hands to the wall and sink again, making sure the skin of her body touched nothing, and peed. Her head hung low. When she sprang up, she tilted her head toward me and smiled. Her lips were shining. The entire time, I was sitting on the floor watching every move. I then crawled to her and began kissing her aggressively on the mouth. She fell from the toilet and moved to my neck. Sweat in our mouths. Me to her chest. Her somewhere else that I don’t remember. I began biting her arms. We were fighting each other for mouth space like dogs on meat.

  “I want you to fuck me hard, Jacob,” she said.

  And I did.

  * * *

  MY WIFE WAS totally out of view by the time I’d reached the outside of the bar. I did my best to chase her. There I was, standing outside in the cold of downtown Chicago without a jacket. Overhead “L” trains were passing and I was looking for a woman who with shoes on was just five feet and had the conversation of a snowball. I stood there for a while though, outside the bar, waiting. At least twenty minutes went by. In some ways I expected her to come back. We’d been married long enough that I thought I deserved this one chance to explain things. Truth is, I’d had a few chances already. At that point, my wife was well aware of who Stephanie Worthington was. She caught me a couple times on the phone, intercepted a letter Steph sent for my birthday, and met her face-to-face another time Steph and I came into the bar.

  That was a couple of years ago. My wife was standing in front of me, almost in the exact same spot where she caught me this time, asking questions she definitely did not want answers to: Why do you keep doing this? What’s this skinny bitch got that I don’t? Why do you lie to me? Are you in love with her? When are you coming to get your things?

  By the time I’d made it home the next day—yes, I decided to remain with Steph that night—my wife had moved everything she owned to some apartment on the North Side. Steph had left by then. I grew lonely. My wife was the safe one. She loved me, was affectionate toward me. At least then. I married the woman because she was everything Steph was not.

  * * *

  STEPH AND I spent one night in that motel. We did another line right before we were to get on the road to Indianapolis. Something to keep us awake. The hangover from the liquor made my head feel as if it was being smashed in a garbage truck. I began walking toward the door and Steph sat behind me on the bed, bouncing up and down like a child on a trampoline.

  I remember still being quite woozy from the previous night, yet the line we did made the spinning feeling going through my head almost attractive. I began running from one end of the motel’s balcony to the other, stopping at the stairs and breathing hard.

  “Look, Stephanie, look how fast I can run!”

  Steph got up and walked to the bathroom. She was paying me no attention. I continued yelling her name. After shooting up and down the porch ten or so more times, I decided to go and get Stuffy. I needed an audience.

  The bathroom was to the back of the motel room, almost directly opposite the entrance, and when I entered, I saw the corners of Steph’s tiptoed feet on the floor. She had put on a white dress, made of some soft material she rolled up into a ball like a towel, and put the ends in her mouth so they didn’t drag on the floor nor touch the toilet. Her head was down.

  “Come on, Stephanie, I want you to watch me run!” Her head began shifting back and forth, left to right. When I got to the bathroom, she didn’t lift her head to acknowledge me, although the door had been left open. I grabbed her by the arm, making her stumble and nearly fall into the toilet. The white dress dipped slightly into the water.

  “Don’t you ever touch me again!” she yelled. I laughed at Steph. It seemed to be a joke of some kind. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t fucking touch me…” She repeated it twelve times. “Don’t touch me unless I tell you I feel like it!”

  I backed away and the grin slowly left my face. The room still spun but it was easier to focus on Steph right then. She probably wasn’t feeling very well from all the liquor she drank, I thought. I simply brushed it off.

  Everything in the world continued to whirl. I walked away and began looking out the door again. The balcony on the second floor of the motel seemed higher, but was probably only ten feet in the air. So, that’s twenty on the third, where we were. It was made of concrete and connected to the stairs leading to each landing. There were stairs on both ends of the building. The energy I felt inside overwhelmed me; it tingled like cold ice in ninety-degree weather. I’d run the balcony of the motel who knows how many times.

  Steph was still sitting in the bathroom, chin touching neck, bottom away from the toilet, head moving back and forth. “Stephanie, come on!” I began yelling again. “Watch how smooth I am, I can run from each end, jump, land on the ground like a cat!” I placed my body in the track runner’s position, first finger pressed to the concrete. “I got nine lives!”

  Back to the bathroom I ran, Stuffy was still stuck by the toilet stool. I grabbed her by the arm, pulled her underwear almost to her waist, fixed her clothes, and yanked her outside. “Watch,” I said after the door’s lock clicked. Steph smiled at me lazily, eyes doing flips and rolls accomplished only by Olympic divers, and leaned against the railing. As my eyes focused on the stairs at the end of the landing, I imagined the ground floor: its gray and grim concrete, cars in the parking lot, other individuals walking around seemingly with no arms and legs, merely floating aimlessly, as though they were in a fishbowl—the world in its own fishbowl. I thought of this world in its fishbowl of water, without me, without Steph, without her dreams of leaving Stateway and my dreams of being with her. The world in water looked warm, warm like a bath, and Steph’s body began swirling around as a loose image in my side view. I snatched her from the railing and stood her upright.

  “You have to stand to see this, you have to stand!” Her head began jerking back and forth as if she was shaking some irritating bug from her hair. “Watch me, Stephanie, I’m going to place our dreams in the water of the world. You just wait, ’cause all of our dreams will from now on be floating in water.”

  I remember there being at least twenty or so steps to the end of the balcony. When I ran down the other end, body still digesting liquor and lines, I saw that water: wet, warm, wavy, welcome. I ran faster than ever to the edge of the landing, diving above the stairs, concrete acting as my springboard, arms as wings spread like a bird, body parallel to the earth.

  I passed out when I heard the splash.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN I AWOKE, her aunt was standing over me. She looked older; under her chin were countless grayish hairs. She didn’t have her glasses or a cigarette or the adoring look she always displayed when talking to me. My left hand was inside her right, and she was rubbing my palms like she was applying lotion. To the right was my mother, sitting in a chair asl
eep. Steph was nowhere around. I knew my face had to be badly bruised because it hurt terribly to move my mouth or blink my eyes. There was a cast on my left leg, the leg she always caressed when sitting on that side of me, covering it almost to the top of my thigh. I had a cast on my right arm as well.

  “The knee was shattered, son,” Steph’s aunt said in a soggy voice. I guess she must have followed my eyes to the casts. “You broke your arm at the elbow.” She clenched my hand tighter. “You’re going to limp from what the doctors say, and have bad arthritis.”

  * * *

  —

  I NEVER DID another line.

  * * *

  —

  STEPH AND I didn’t go on any other dates like that for nearly two years. She grew more focused than ever on leaving the housing project, the entire time trying to pull me along with her. She came up with a good plan for us to get married and head out. It almost happened. We came really close. But I just couldn’t. I was too scared to go. And she chose to leave without me.

  * * *

  —

  WE DID OUR eventual bar thing for nearly eight years, until my wife caught me this last time. Even though we partied and drank together when she came to Chicago to see me, I begged Stuffy to quit. Quit it all.

  “I want my dreams in water, like yours,” she’d say. “Every time I’m there, every single time I do a line, I see it: clear, wet, warm. I see you there, too, Jacob, smiling at me like when we were teenagers, swimming, living. It’s where we were supposed to be. Me and you, together in the water of the world.”

  I went back to my wife after this last time with Steph. She looked me directly in the eye and said, “See her no more.” I nodded as a promise. She then asked those questions from the bar, repeating them as though they were recorded. This time I had to answer. And I explained everything.