The Girl She Used to Be Read online

  I rub my arm, trying to make the pain dissipate. “Which is what?”

  He glances in the rearview again and says, “We can outmaneuver him.”

  Suddenly, he turns the car down a side road and begins weaving around the cars in front of us like he’s playing a video game. I look in the side mirror and I can see Peter losing speed as Jonathan zips around the obstacles before us. He takes another turn and we’re on a winding road that traverses a small grouping of hills. Jonathan is right; we’re riding on rails.

  Peter fades quickly.

  Jonathan makes another turn and we’re on a six-lane highway and headed for the Palisades Parkway.

  Peter is merely a dot.

  Jonathan zooms in and out of traffic, ignoring the speed limits and the safety of other motorists, and by the time we get to the New Jersey Turnpike, Peter is gone.

  We are heading south.

  I am still aching and my head is spinning and I am shaking because I have no idea what is going on or what Jonathan is thinking.

  “Now what?” I ask.

  Jonathan just stares at the road, hands at ten and two; he looks like a crash test dummy, right down to the blank expression on his face.

  I try again. “Now wh—”

  “Why do you love me?” he asks.

  I turn to him and squint. “What do you mean? There’s no reason I love you. It’s an emotion, tied to—”

  “No.” He blinks a few times. “You love me because I gave you freedom, Melody.” He turns and looks at me and sniffles. “I freed you from the bondage you’ve been in your whole life. That’s why you feel this emotion for me. Only because I gave you freedom.”

  “What? I—no, that’s not true. I love you because of who you are, the man you are. I love you because of what you’re doing right now.” I reach over and touch his leg again and it makes him sigh nervously.

  “Are you sure?”

  I lean into him and whisper, “Of course.” I rub his chest while he drives. “Do you love me?”

  “The way I feel about you, Melody, makes me realize I’ve never known love before.” We drive for a few miles before Jonathan adds, “Oh… what are we gonna do?”

  I sit up and kiss him on the cheek and whisper my scheme. “We could get married. That way I couldn’t testify against you.”

  Jonathan laughs. “You’re cute in a naive way. The feds would be watching you and me twenty-four hours a day. And you’d still be able to testify against my family, which would almost ensure a bullet in the brain. Besides, you’re not ready to marry me; you’ve only known me for a few days.”

  “Jonathan,” I say sternly, “I’ve only known myself for a few days.” I sit up and look at him and wish he could make eye contact with me. “It really is like I’m just a few days old, like I’m finally understanding who I am and who I was meant to be. And I realize that I want to spend my life with you.”

  The reaction I was hoping to see in Jonathan is not coming. He is not smiling, not touching me, not hopeful. He quickly swerves into the slow lane and exits the highway and pulls off the road completely. He puts the car in Neutral, pulls up the emergency brake, and turns to me.

  He lets out a sigh that could easily be mistaken for his final breath.

  “We just played the only hand we had, Melody. It’s over.”

  I shake my head in disbelief. “What do you mean? What’s over?”

  “This. Us. It’s over.”

  My lips start to quiver. “Over? It’s barely started. I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t you see? You had two days of freedom and you became a new woman—the woman you should’ve been your whole life. You’re about to lose it all again.”

  “No,” I plead, “it doesn’t have to be that way.” I touch his sweater and ball my fist up in it. “We can get married.” I try to sound strong. “Marry me, Jonathan.”

  I can hear him holding back tears through his words. “You know we can’t. No one will ever leave us alone. The feds. My family. Everyone will be hunting us down. There won’t be a single day that passes that you won’t wonder if your car is gonna blow up or I’ve been murdered.”

  I can’t stop shaking. I reach for the nearest possibility. “Then let’s just run away together. We can run away and no one will ever find us.”

  Jonathan strokes my hair, tries to be tender as he brings me back to reality. “Melody, you’ve been running for over two decades, and you had professionals helping you. How long before they find you—us—again?”

  I try to wipe my face of tears, but it’s pointless. “Then we can both go into Witness Protection together. You can testify against your family and—”

  “Melody,” he says, pulling me close, “it’s over.” He holds my head to his chest and we slowly rock back and forth. “Don’t you see? If I go into Witness Protection with you it will be even worse than before, with more lies, with an even bigger threat of being killed. It will never end, Melody. You will never be free.”

  And he’s right. The running would never stop. Every slip of the tongue, every mistake, would mean we’d be off to another town, another job, another resting place until the next blunder.

  We cry in each other’s arms.

  After we calm, Jonathan says quietly, “My family was going to make me kill the woman I loved. They didn’t care at all about what I was feeling. It was all about business. And they’d kill me if they thought I chose you over them. Seriously, Peter wasn’t just following us to make sure I got the job done.” Jonathan shakes his head and rests it on the window. “You see? We’re running already.”

  He sits up and I pull my head from his chest and we stare at each other for a moment.

  Then he looks down and I know this is the beginning of the end.

  Jonathan puts the car in gear and we speed away, quickly returning to the interstate. “What are you going to do?” I ask.

  He wipes his face with the sleeve of his sweater. “I’m gonna do what I promised you, Melody. I’m gonna dowhat needs to be done. I’m going to keep you safe and free forever.”

  I hold on to the door as he flies down the highway. “Why are you driving so fast?”

  “Because Peter or someone else affiliated with my family is probably heading for my house or my restaurant to see if they can find me—and I need to beat them there.”

  He passes cars like they’re parked, weaving in and out, topping a hundred miles per hour. If a cop spots us, we’re dead. And if a car pulls in front of us, we’re really dead. His maneuvering and speed have taken the words from me. The only breaks we get—and the only chance I get to catch my breath—are the toll booths, like commercial breaks to some insane, unrealistic flick. All I can do is hold on.

  We’re over the George Washington Bridge and before I can even get my bearings, we’re on the BQE. If it wasn’t a Sunday we’d be sitting in gridlock.

  Jonathan’s eyes dart from the road to his mirrors and back, like he’s fighting some tic, though he seems assured that no one is following us. He zooms around the city streets and begins to calm as we reach whatever destination he has in mind; he obeys the lights and speed limits. We reach Grand Street in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn and he pulls the car in front of an Italian restaurant named Sylvia near Wythe Avenue. He looks around and reaches for the door.

  I stare at the front of the meticulous bistro and ask, “Is this your—”

  “Stay here. Keep your head down. If I’m not back in sixty seconds, you drive away. Understand?”

  I gulp and nod.

  Jonathan runs into the restaurant and I slink down in my seat. I watch the door and hope and pray that he comes dashing out with some great solution to our problem: an arsenal, a team of federal agents, a cloaking device.

  He comes back at full speed, with no more than five seconds to spare, carrying what looks like an old medical bag.

  Jonathan hops in the car and as the tires spin, he says, “They’re here, coming in the back just as I ran out the front.”


  The pavement goes whizzing by and I’m holding on with all my strength.

  Berry Street.

  Metropolitan Avenue.

  Meeker Avenue.

  The BQE.

  I think I’ve figured it out: LaGuardia Airport.

  Jonathan slows, and suddenly we are moving away from the airport and just as I get a handle on where we are, he pulls onto Livingston Street and right up to the Greyhound bus terminal.

  “Jonathan, what’s going on? What are we doing?”

  He stops in front of the entryway, turns the car off, and puts the flashers on. He gets out, comes to my side, pulls me from the car, and leads me inside the terminal. The station is dirty and noisy. We stop about thirty feet from the counter. It is Sunday and the terminal is going to close at 4:00 P.M.—six minutes.

  “You wouldn’t get anywhere on a plane without identification. This is the only way out. Not to mention my family would never think of coming here. They probably sent someone to LaGuardia, Kennedy, and Newark.”

  He hands me the pouch and I peek inside. Money.

  “It’s about nine grand,” he says. “It’s all the money I had that was laundered; it’s clean. It’s not a lot but it will get you started. Just go away, Melody. Just leave.”

  I fall into him and dig my nails into his clothing. “No! Jonathan, no! I can’t.”

  “Go somewhere you’ve never been before. Move to a town where I would never guess you would go, in case I weaken and try to find you.”

  My weeping has turned to hysterics. “Jonathan, please! I’m begging you!”

  “Never call me or my family again. Never call the feds or the marshals again. Never use any of your aliases again. Do you understand?”

  I bury my head in his sweater and he holds my body to keep me from dropping to the ground. “Yes.”

  He holds me and kisses the top of my head. “This is the last time you will ever have to run, Melody. I promise.”

  And then a thought hits me like a locomotive—and my crying instantly stops. I pull back and look him in the eye. “You knew, didn’t you. You knew that I might not be free to make the decision to leave if we’d made love.”

  It’s as if the tears leap from my eyes to his. “I didn’t want it to cloud your judgment. I just wanted what was best for you in case the worst happened.” He shrugs a little. “And the worst happened.”

  I squeeze him tightly and he says to me, “You’ll never be ripped from a lover’s arms ever again. This will be the last time.”

  I kiss him and I can feel people staring. There are two types of kisses at terminals: hellos and good-byes. This one is passionate; it’s good-bye—forever.

  When our lips finally part, I stand on my toes and whisper in his ear, “You were my first, Jonathan. You will always be my first.”

  He smiles and takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. He pulls away and holds my hands and starts to step backward and says, “No matter what happens to us, this was all worth it.” Our hands part and he paces farther back, toward the door. “It was all worth it.”

  My chin wrinkles and my face aches from crying and I cannot move as I watch him walk out the door.

  As I make my way deeper into the terminal, I keep turning around to see Jonathan sitting in his car, head on the steering wheel, sobbing. I watch him every second that I can, and I cherish them all.

  Finally, he starts the car and slowly drives away. He is no longer in a hurry.

  It takes all of my energy to focus on the moment. I have no idea what Jonathan has in mind, but he seems determined and confident that his plan will work. Now I need to do my part.

  For the tenth time in my life, I have nothing—and have been given no chance to take anything with me: not the green sweater that Jonathan gave to me when we first met, not my text on string theory, not even clean underwear. I am nameless and faceless. I have no identification, no purpose, no destination.

  I am nobody.

  Jonathan was right; people may be worried about planes and trains being hijacked or rigged with bombs, but no one cares about the bus industry. I pay in cash and no one even looks at my face; I’m just the last fare of a long day for an hourly worker. No one checks my bag or asks me to be scanned.

  There is one bus left, and with two minutes to spare I take my eighty-dollar ticket to Columbus, Ohio, and from there I will move on again. And again. I may never stop moving. I have nowhere to arrive.

  IT TAKES A LONG TIME TO CROSS THE UNITED STATES, ESPECIALLY in a Greyhound. It might be faster to ride an actual greyhound. I’ve been on the road for four days, and stayed in three squalid motels with comfort and quality in the names, and each time they lied.

  Instead of buying one ticket to a final destination, I simply allowed Greyhound to take me to wherever my ticket read, and when I got there, I bought a ticket for whatever bus was soonest to leave that terminal. I let fate determine my destination, as long as the direction was roughly west; I want to be as far from New York as I can get without needing a passport or other identification.

  And as the bus pulls into the final terminal, having gone as far west as possible, I am the only person on the bus and it’s two in the morning and when it finally comes to a stop, I sit and wait for someone to ask me to leave. They are gracious but, after all, the destination is usually the point.

  I step off the bus and the wet, warm air of San Diego weighs heavy on me and the skyline looms above, a beautiful steel and concrete mixing bowl of anonymity, a place for me to plunge.

  I’ve spent four days and nights thinking of Jonathan; the first two were tear-filled hours of loss and the second two were thought filled, waiting for some sign of what to do next, where to go, how to live.

  I don’t have a name.

  I don’t know what to do.

  The only thing I know for certain is that I must begin to heal. Just like every time my life was re-created, I had to begin restoring the foundered part of my being: the lost relationships, the familiarity of a neighborhood, the sense of the person I might have been. There is an algebraic term for the technique for distributing two binomials, called the FOIL method. It stands for first, outer; inner, last. And that is exactly how I have learned to repair myself time after time: from the outside in.

  I walk a few blocks from the bus station and find a decrepit twenty-four-hour diner. I pause at the window and gaze at the patrons, making sure the place is full of docile folks and not a place for drunken partyers to go after the bars close. It looks safe; I go in.

  The counter has ten stools and four are taken, with a stool between each person. I sit at the end, in much the same way I sat at the bar in West Virginia a few days ago—except that I have a bag full of cash sitting on my lap.

  The heavyset, post-retirement-age waitress behind the counter comes to me and passes a halfhearted smile and says, “What can I get you, honey?”

  I speak for the first time today. “Coffee,” I say in a rasp. I point behind her and add, “Slice of cherry pie.”

  I get the other half of her smile and she walks away.

  I put my elbows up on the counter and rest my face in my hands and sigh.

  My ears become more aware with my eyes closed. I hear the waitress and short-order cook chatting in front of me, the clinks of utensils and coffee cups on saucers, the whispery conversations, the distant newscaster on the television in the corner of the restaurant.

  I can feel my body drifting and I shift forward as I nearly fall asleep. The din of the restaurant is soothing—the clinks, the whispers, all like parents trying not to wake the baby.

  Everyone, everything, is as faint and gentle as a kiss on the cheek, a secure and welcoming urban nest.

  Chatter.

  Clink.

  Whisper.

  Then, just as I’m about to fall asleep, someone murmurs my name: Melody Grace McCartney.

  Out of the depth of my fading awareness, I pull my hands from my face and open my eyes. I look around the diner.

  Then I hea
r it again. Melody Grace McCartney.

  A smile comes to my face as my eyes dart around the room randomly and I say, “Jonathan!”

  “You got that right,” the waitress says as she pours my coffee. “What an asshole that guy is. He deserves everything that’s coming to him.” She slides the pie my way and walks a few steps closer to the television. “What a waste.”

  I rub my eyes and look at the television and I see myself; along with the newscaster and the ticker at the bottom of the screen, CNN has a picture of me in the corner—from when I was six years old.

  I stumble off my seat and run to the end of the counter so I can hear every word, but now the chatter and the clinks and the whispers are impeding my understanding of what is happening.

  My eyes open wide as my picture disappears, replaced by an image of Jonathan, unshaven and disheveled, in handcuffs.

  Just as I am about to tell everyone to shut up, the screen changes and I’m staring at a commercial for a Toyota Camry.

  I am motionless. I am not breathing.

  I walk back to the end of the counter and grab my bag of cash off the stool and clutch it to my chest. The waitress catches my eye.

  “Something wrong, honey?”

  I clear my throat. “I’ve just… I’ve just been on the road for a few days and I’m not sure, um…”

  “What is it?”

  “What, um… do you know what that was all about?”

  She points over her shoulder. “What, you mean the Johnny Bravo business?”

  “It’s Bovaro, Rita,” the cook says.

  I swallow and nod.

  “Boy,” Rita says, “you must’ve been traveling on a mule because it’s the only thing the news people want to cover,” she says. “I’m tired of hearing about it.”

  My hands start to tremble; I rest them under my thighs. “Can you… tell me what happened?”

  She leans on the counter. “Johnny Bovaro apparently found out where the government was hiding a witness, that McCartney girl, and murdered her. She was in Witness Protection for almost her whole life, like twenty years or something, and this asshole, Bovaro, kills her because her parents testified against his dad. The Mafia is nothing but a bunch of assholes.”