The Sleepover
When we were kids and Haley would come to spend the night at my house, she would always show up with this big, quilted duffle bag. She used it for everything: family vacations and cheer competitions and sleepaway camp. But even just for some 18 hours at my place, she’d be dragging her duffle bag with her. It’d be so stuffed, the zipper wouldn’t go. I always said it looked like she was running away. So, it made me kind of happy, despite everything, when I saw her coming out of her apartment building with that old bag. I liked that if she really was running away, she was running with me.
When she’d called me, she sounded genuinely afraid. Well, when she’d called the first time, I hadn’t answered. It was Saturday morning and I was Swiffering my kitchen. I had Joni Mitchell blaring and my ringer off. Then I’d reached for my phone to hit repeat on California and she was calling for the second time, so I answered. I could hear the water in her voice while she tried to keep her volume level, telling me about the fight. How it seemed to come out of nowhere. How she couldn’t say what had set him off. That he hadn’t hit her or anything, god, of course not. But it seemed like maybe he could. Like maybe he wanted to. It was something about the way he was moving. Did that sound crazy? Did she sound crazy?
We made pretty good time for a Saturday. We were headed in the right direction: Away. I’d pulled over halfway through the drive as the sun was just starting to dip, so that Haley could get in the back and stretch out, the duffle bag as a makeshift pillow. She was still asleep when I pulled off at the grocery store—the last chance to stop before it was all long private driveways and eventual dirt roads. I didn’t bother to wake her and wavered on whether or not to turn off the car. The dashboard thermometer told me it was 51 degrees, kind of cold. Was that how people died in their cars? I walked into the store thinking about forgetful mothers who left their infants strapped into car seats while they went to work. I was leaving my baby in the car with the motor running.
Once in the store, I took a cart instead of a basket. Something that he’d done, she’d told me, that had scared her, was he’d knocked everything off the kitchen counter while he yelled at her. Just knocked off the drying rack and its dishes and thawing meat for dinner and a salt and pepper shaker and even the good dutch oven in one fell swoop, everything crashing and breaking and clanging while he yelled. I looked around to make sure I was the only one in the aisle then did the same to a shelf of potato chips, reached out my arm and swept them all into my cart. I wanted to make sure we’d have everything we needed, unsure how much, if anything, would be left after my parents were there last. I bought coffee grounds and filters, rolls of paper towels, frozen pizzas, sparkling water. They had a special: pints of ice cream, two-for-one. Like they were just waiting for me to show up.
Haley woke up when I was loading the things in the trunk. She blinked in the darkness, sat up and twisted around to look at me.
“Look what I got,” I said.
I held up a jar of pickles. Haley had been a big crier as a kid. After a good sob her mom used to make her eat pickles, loads of them, to replace all the lost electrolytes from her tears. Haley laughed a little. She reached over behind the seat and grabbed them from me.
“This really works, you know,” she said, unscrewing the jar.
When we got to the cabin, Haley ignored the groceries and carried only her bag. I loaded up my arms like a pack mule and struggled to unlock the door. The beds were all still made. My parents wouldn’t be up for another two weeks to winterize the place. Haley left her bag and shoes in the front room and headed for the kids’ room–the bunk beds we’d slept in when she’d used to come away with us for part of the summer.
“Well, my parents aren’t coming,” I said. “So, we can take their room.”
Haley nodded and redirected. She called back from the bedroom, said she wasn’t hungry, just tired. She climbed into the bed and seemed to fall back asleep instantly.
I futzed around in the kitchen. I laid out the snacks on the counter, so when she was hungry she’d see everything I had to offer. I did some quick spot cleaning, a little dusting. I didn’t look at my phone. It was Saturday night and I was five hours from home and expected to be in the office at 8:15 on Monday. Really, I was supposed to be on a date. A second date with a girl from an app, who was supposed to cook me dinner. I’d nearly forgotten all about it, had had to call her on speaker with Haley in the car. She was standing in a wine shop when I called, said it was perfect timing, asked if I preferred white or red—she was making a fish dish and it could go either way. She’d been really understanding about the whole thing. Could’ve been mad, but wasn’t, or hid it well. I’d looked over at Haley to see if maybe that stung, the breeziness of it. I couldn’t remember if he had my number either, if he might try to call me to reach Haley. So, I didn’t look at my phone.
I’d hardly brought anything with me. I was still in my Saturday morning cleaning clothes: a college sweatshirt, leggings with the elastic stretched out. When Haley had agreed with me that we should leave right away, I’d packed a quick overnight bag. But Haley’s overstuffed bag sat in the corner. I wanted to dig through it, to see just how much of her life she’d wanted to bring with her, but I left it alone. What mattered, really, is she’d wanted to bring me. It wasn’t even ten o’clock when I brushed my teeth and crawled into the bed with Haley, carefully. I didn’t want to startle her by spooning, scared her sleeping body might think I was him. But she scooted her body closer to mine without waking, like someone used to never sleeping alone.
In the morning, Haley was awake before me. I came into the living room and she was on the couch, in my pajamas. She’d made coffee. I realized she was crying, staring down into her mug.
“We live together,” she said. “Where am I supposed to live?”
For someone who hadn’t been beaten up, she still looked it. She was puffy and pink, blotched and ugly. I guess she could see how bad she looked from the way I was looking at her, because she started to laugh.
“What I really should have brought,” she said, “was my ice roller.”
I went to the freezer and pulled out a pint of the ice cream, held it up. She shook her head.
“Too big.”
I dug an ice cube out of the maker, wrapped it in a paper towel. I sat next to her on the couch and ran it over her cheekbones and under her eyelids.
“Is that helping?” I asked.
“Not really,” she said, but she was still laughing.
We connected my laptop to the tv and spent the day trying to watch movies. It was impossible to find anything without a man in it, a good one or a bad one. I thought about Thelma and Louise, about Fried Green Tomatoes, but why rub it in. We were already at the better part of the movie. We ended up watching cartoons about mice trying to make it in a new city, about elephants who missed their mothers. We ate with our fingers, talked with our mouths full. We fell asleep on the couch with our feet in each other’s faces.
It really did feel like when we were kids. Back then, when she’d come over, she’d end up throwing her things all around my room, trying on my clothes and replacing them with her own on my hangers, mixing her Barbies in with mine. If we went out we’d pretend we were sisters; but if we stayed in we played house. We’d go back-and-forth for hours, swapping who would play husband and who would play wife. When the sleepover was over and her mom was outside honking the horn we’d have to pack her all up again and Haley would always cry. Five more minutes, she’d beg to stay, one more night, forever. Every time she came with her stuffed bag—even as I got older, even after I knew that wishing something wouldn’t make it so—I’d think, maybe this time she won’t have to go home. And then here we were. And like I said, I wasn’t glad this was happening to her, but I couldn’t deny I was happy it was happening to us.
The next morning she said she was ready to go home and I thought, why not. I’d called off sick, said I was coming down with something and would update day-by-day. But probably better to get back to work, for both of us. Haley might need to take more time off, lay low in the apartment. I thought about the stories you read in the news, angry men showing up to their ex’s job. It might take money to leave someone, even just your boyfriend, so I’d better not miss too much work. I didn’t really know what boyfriends were like. Haley changed back into the clothes she’d come in and threw her duffle, otherwise untouched, in the back of my car.
Haley played DJ on the drive home. We harmonized on love songs like two humpback whales, took high parts and low parts out of our range. I didn’t realize she’d keyed her address into the GPS, and not mine, until we took an exit for the city.
“I’ve got to go back to my place,” she said, when I asked.
“I feel like you brought enough to get by for a while, no?”
I glanced at the bag in the backseat. But I figured maybe she’d left something important behind. And maybe it was a good idea. Maybe she knew he’d be at work and she could pack all her shit at once, make a clean break. I didn’t ask her any more questions.
When we got to her building I asked her for the fob for her garage but she told me I didn’t need to park. I told her I’d come with her, help her pack. That I’d better come with, just in case he was there. Not that I thought it would really go that crazy, but you never know. She unhooked her seatbelt and leaned across the console to hug me. She wrapped her hand around my neck, squeezed me at the nape.
“You’re such a good friend.”
Then she got out of the car, opened the back door and took her bag out with her.
When they got married, fourteen months later, I drove to the beach instead of going to the wedding. I didn’t know where I was going. I just got in the car and drove until I saw water, sand. I wanted to walk into the ocean. Well, I did walk into the ocean, but I think you know what I mean.