and I donât think it was healthy. I started to wonder if Ned did know where we were, if heâd known for ages, if Iâd been wrong to think we were on our own the whole time. I felt more and more paranoid and I made up theoriesâhe was watching us using satellites and GPS, heâd turned my laptop camera into a spy device.
In the movies it was easy.
The paranoiaâs still with me, exaggerated and ridiculous as paranoia has to be. I live alongside it the way I would an unpredictable roommate. A suspicion rises that weâre not as far away from him as I assumed we were, that Ned hovers unseen. Then I reassure myself, which works mildly: the nervousness subsides, until it rises again.
Heâs always known my parentsâ telephone numberâitâs the same number theyâve had since I was a child, I say to myself. So what if he called while Lena and I were there? It was Thanksgiving and I knew he might call, or worse. Our material circumstances havenât changed, I tell myself, I have no real evidence of his proximity here at the motel.
Itâs only that his voiceâa warm South Carolina drawl thatâs alluring until you detect the insincere overtoneâand his manipulative conversation with my mother have infected me, exactly as he intended. Itâs me realizing, hearing that voice for the first time in two years, that Iâve gone from what I thought was love to neutrality to dislike to open hostility. Iâm contaminated by the discord between loathing Ned now and once having adored him: I remember my adoration acutely and wince. I donât know how much is shame and how much is confusion. My former, deluded self was a loose construction of poorly angled mirrors and blind spots, I can see that now.
But Lenaâs better. She woke up smiling and full of energy yesterday morning with no fever, and weâve started lessons again. Iâm relieved but out of sorts anyway, because besides my paranoia about Ned Iâm also grappling to understand the staying of the guests.
In Lenaâs and my case I know why weâre lying low. We have two scarce commodities: disposable income and my willingness to spend it on a dingy motel in Maine in December. I hold my willingness to pay for this cold privilege to be an idiosyncratic feature. But here are the other guests, also apparently willing and able to pay and stay.
They canât all be in hiding from estranged husbands; they canât all be, say, drug dealers on the lam. And even if they are all friends or relations of Donâs, that fails to fully explain their presence, short of a simultaneous eviction from their homes. Itâs disorienting and is preoccupying me. Technically itâs none of my business, though, and Iâm reluctant to broach the subject with Don.
And the college drug dealer with the five oâclock shadow has been making overtures to Kay. He approached her in the café this morning and offered small talk about genres of orange juice.
âWho likes the kind with orange pulp?â he asked. âWhere are these orange pulp drinkers? I donât want to drink the pulp. Do you want to drink the pulp?â
There was a certain expectant force to his approach that I recognized with curiosity. Pick-up lines have changed since the advent of Seinfeld ; now they often take the form of one person asking another about a mundane detail, a baffling social or consumer habit. Maybe the idea is to forge an alliance in the face of seemingly senseless choices made by others. Anyway Kay shrugged at the orange-juice pulp opener, but she smiled at him.
Later she told me he isnât a college drug dealer but a guy who makes and spends fortunes selling Hollywood movies to foreign markets. His youth combined with his skill in this realm makes him a prodigy at profit, a producer or studio executive or other dealmaker, I canât recall the title she gave me. So he is rich, but not aimless or
Terri Reed, Becky Avella, Dana R. Lynn