With or Without You Read online

  Mildred pressed her fingers into the rubber, feeling comforted for the first time since they’d boarded the train that morning. It wasn’t the ball, but the fact that Brooke had remembered it. She knew her priorities, and she was so confident. She’s ready, Mildred thought, though years later that moment would come to haunt her: Perhaps she should have stuffed the squishy ball down Brooke’s throat and dragged her back to Blue Bell. What were they thinking? She was only a child. But on that dazzling fall day Mildred was obscured by the glamour, the intensity, the prospects of it all, if not totally without guidance, for Mildred Harrison, after watching her daughter walk off with the woman in the suit, did something she hadn’t done on her own in years: She prayed.

  She did not speak very loud. Nor did she kneel, preferring instead to invoke God from the security of her leather armchair. It was a short prayer, a few simple words asking God for an end to his putting them through the ringer, the echo of a recent service, her vague requisition a deliberate nod to the unknown forces that might lie ahead. When she finished Mildred felt inexplicably jubilant and wondered if the Almighty had pumped her with laughing gas. Her giggles would have graduated to all-out laughter had she not been shushed by Kenny Zeller who was standing with his face pressed into the doorjamb. He was spying on Brooke’s audition.

  Protective antennae on high, Mildred bolted up out of her seat and whispered, “Get away from there!”

  But Kenny turned his head and, with his forefinger on his lips, said, “Shhh!”

  Then, with the very same finger, he motioned for Mildred to join him. A quick glance between them passed before Kenny took a couple of steps back, making room for Mildred. She bent her knees, leaning into the crack of light coming from the audition room, and as her eyes adjusted she saw Brooke standing with her hand on her hip, listening to the voice of a man whom Mildred could not see. He was saying that because World Without End was a soap, Jaymie Jo would be seen every day in many different situations, so they needed to see whether Brooke was a versatile actress. A versatile actress? Only weeks earlier she had been earning raves from her teachers in this very city. Hadn’t they read her résumé? For the first time since Brooke started acting, Mildred had to fight the stage mother’s urge to burst through the door screaming: “She’s the best. Simply the best!”

  But being so new, this desire quickly fled. Mildred took a deep breath and crushed the squishy globe in her right hand as her daughter fell into the scene. The setup: Jaymie Jo has just learned that a friend was killed in a car accident. Her father (the invisible male voice) comforts her with truisms Mildred found a bit overblown. But the heck with him, she couldn’t believe the array of expressions dancing so effortlessly, so elegantly across her daughter’s face. Who was this young woman emoting in front of her? Is it possible that Mildred had never looked beyond her removed posturing? Or was Brooke the best actress she’d ever seen?

  What happened next was even more shocking, as Brooke burst into an aria of heart-stopping sobs, the likes of which Mildred hadn’t seen since her daughter was a young child, but in that one moment behind the white door, for the benefit of the director and producers, Brooke had managed to cough up all of the pain, all of the rejection, all of the frustration of the last few years, and it was perfect. Just perfect. In fact, Mildred herself was so absorbed in the moment, she bounced to her feet and this time would have screamed an ecstatic “Yes!” had Kenny not stretched his hand out from behind and covered her mouth. Mildred slipped backwards, but Kenny kept her standing. With his free hand he lifted Mildred’s wrist as if he were conferring a title on a professional boxer, the globe rising like a thick glove above their heads. And despite the obviousness of the pun, Mildred Harrison did at that moment feel like she had the whole world in her hands.

  LIFE EXPERIENCE

  YOUR FATHER IS SUCH A BABE,” said my friend Edie. Of everything in the living room—two giant TV sets, at least four videocassette recorders, camera and tripod, a rack of blinking stereo components, paintings signed by famous artists, leather couch and chairs from Italy, heated slate floor, and that amazing view—she’d zeroed in on a shelf with a couple of framed photographs. It was her first time at my house, and I told her she was going to hate it. But she said it was kind of cool. She liked the flat roof and openness. It reminded her of houses she’d seen in magazines. I was glad she’d invited herself over.

  She had appeared one day in homeroom, not long after you’d collected your first Daytime Emmy for playing Jaymie Jo Rheinhart. You’d gotten so big so fast. One day you were the new girl in Foxboro and the next you’d hogged the cover of every soap magazine in America. I was happy I’d been there from the beginning and had started clipping articles. Some I hung on my bulletin board or taped to the walls, others I carried in my sketchbook, practicing what Mickey’d taught me about art. In colored pencils I kept you with me always, taking any free moment to draft the outline of your face, a new outfit, or that boyfriend of yours who presented new color possibilities. It was important work, you told a reporter from Soap Opera Digest, and I pledged to support you even though the producers had received a bunch of angry letters, and my grandmother called from Arizona to tell me you didn’t look like the kind of girl who would date a schvartza, and something about the way she said the word made me shiver and like her a little bit less. People were always chipping away at themselves, little by little making it more difficult to love them. You understood this. In the same Digest interview you said it was hard to trust people since you’d become famous. You could relate to your character coming into a whole new life. You’d had to leave your entire family on the other side of the country, having landed a role on one of the only soaps that didn’t shoot in New York, and making friends was never easy for you. “I understand what it’s like to feel all alone in the world,” you said. “I’m kind of an outsider.”

  I clipped that quote and taped it into the sketchbook Blair had given me. You and me, we were both outsiders, both alone in the world. We could tell each other things. There was (and still is) a way we communicated that went beyond time and space.

  And you were opening up to me. I knew you liked McDonald’s hamburgers, preferred Pepsi to Coke, though your favorite drink was Orange Crush. You went to church on Sundays whenever you were home in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, with your family. You had your hair trimmed and highlighted once a month, your legs and bikini line waxed every three weeks, which was sort of upsetting. You couldn’t have been that hairy, you were a natural blonde, and I wondered whether you’d think I was too hairy, but I was terrified of hot wax and razors and usually made a mess of stuff that came easy to other girls. I’m telling you, my genes and chromosomes had crossed wires somewhere along the way. One night I dreamed I was in the desert apartment with my grandmother. She pulled me out on the terrace and beneath the rhinestone stars asked if I knew anything about hermaphrodites.

  “They have both sex organs, like the earthworm,” I said, psyched to display my knowledge. Earlier that week in biology we’d pinned rubbery earthworms to blocks and sliced them down the center.

  “Good, then you’ll understand,” Grandma said, and gave me the face she’d used when she thought I was making fun of old Mickey.

  “Understand?”

  Her face stretched from grave to ghastly. “That’s what happened to you!”

  I bolted up in bed. My sheets were soaked and I could barely breathe. I pulled my hands behind my hot, sweaty neck. It wasn’t true, I told myself, it was only a dream, only a dream … I was overwhelmed by the thumping of my heart, my soothing words, but when I turned my head toward the glass I swear it was you speaking, not me.

  You were the first person since Blair who really knew my mind. But you were having a tough time in Hollywood and just like Blair you needed someone to look out for you: I was up for the job. The first step was getting to know each other privately, until I could leave home and become famous. We needed to be on equal footing in the outside world.

  My immedi
ate world was high school, with the same kids from junior high. Edie was the new girl. Just like you. But in a way, she was your exact opposite. You were so light and clean-looking, eyes as clear as the Pacific; Edie had the darkest black hair I’d ever seen, wore ripped T-shirts and fishnets. Up close her skin was like milky cellophane and her eyes, once you got past the raccoon makeup, flashed a purplish blue—a young punked-out Liz Taylor. You visited animal shelters and said people’s hearts should be filled with love not hate. Edie was a flesh-and-bone hypodermic of hatred and contempt. In the lunchroom, I’d overheard people say she was a witch, a devil worshipper, a cokehead, a pot dealer; she’d had an abortion (which was why she had to leave Ohio where she’d been living with her father), French-kissed her older brother, sucked off the bass player in a heavy metal band from the south shore; guys kept roaches from the joints she’d smoked in their wallets. I often caught myself staring at her, wondering if she knew what people said, what it felt like to be so talked about.

  Then one strangely warm winter afternoon during lunch, I sat in the dried-up grass near the steps by the gym (smokers’ corner) trying not to listen to a group of girls nearby. They talked about the dumbest things. A shadow loomed in. I looked up expecting a cloud but instead saw Edie standing over me. “You shouldn’t smoke cigarettes,” she said, but before I could think of a response she sat down next to me and continued talking. “They’re totally useless, you know? They don’t even get you high.”

  “It’s not about that.”

  She took out a lighter and plastic stick with a metal tip that looked like a tiny baseball bat. “Oh yeah? Then what’s it about?” She put the bat in her mouth, flicked the lighter in front of the metal, and inhaled. Her chest puffed up with smoke, the smell unmistakable. Jack’s.

  “I don’t know, smoking keeps me mellow,” I said. “Gives me something to do.”

  She burst out laughing. Tiny gray clouds staggered from her mouth. “Okay, that’s good, that’s honest, that’s cool, I believe you. There is absolutely nothing to do around here. See, I have this theory that’s kind of based on science …” She stopped for a second to grab another hit from the bat. Then she handed it to me. “Go ahead. I packed that baby good this morning. It’s Peruvian Gold. It’ll blast your boobs off.” She laughed and I lit up, though I’d never got stoned in school before (never got stoned outside of my own house). And we were right on the front lawn. “Look at them,” Edie pointed to the girls in smokers’ corner. “Have you ever seen people who look so much like each other? And talk so much like each other? They probably do it the same way, too.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, it’s kind of scary.”

  “Did you ever have this? You’re sitting in class and all of a sudden everybody’s voices become echoes?”

  “Like an echo chamber,” I said, leaning back on my hands to count the clouds rolling in.

  “An echo chamber?”

  “It’s like a mirrored room, only the walls are cushions instead of glass. You make a noise and it bounces back in a million different ways. They use them for sound effects on TV.”

  “That’s exactly my point! Everything in this school, in this town, on this whole planet, you know … so much of it’s meaningless sound.” Edie took a sudden pivot and grabbed my arm. “Did you ever listen to the Butthole Surfers?” No, I hadn’t ever. Her eyes exploded. “Oh my god, they’re the best. The only good music these days is coming from the other coast. I’ll play you the Buttholes sometime. You’re gonna love them … I have to tell you, those are really cool pants”—they were camouflage—“I’ve got a halter top the same. And those sneakers, okay, where’d you get them?”

  “In the city.”

  “I knew it! You don’t look like everyone else around here.”

  “Neither do you.”

  She let go of me and slipped the bat into the chest pocket of her jean jacket. Then she glanced left and right as if somebody was watching us. “Okay, are you ready for this?”

  “Your theory?”

  “Theory?”

  “Before. You said something about science.”

  “Science?”

  “Yeah, science.”

  Edie’s eyes crossed and she knocked her palm against her forehead. “Oh my god, I forgot!” She giggled and I giggled and before I knew it we were both rolling in the prickly grass, laughing our heads off. We breathed heavily, sighed, then Edie sat up and said she had to see a guy called the Ayatollah over by the junior high. “Got a business meeting.” She tapped the pocket above her chest where the bat was and winked. “But first I have to know, have you always been here?”

  “Since I was about twelve.”

  “That’s exactly when I came down!”

  “But you just got here from Ohio.”

  “That’s where I landed, poor me … talk about the soundless masses. I’m really from the planet Andromeda,” she said, and I giggled, but she didn’t join me. “Don’t tell me you’re a nonbeliever! I’m so disappointed.” She raised her hands to the sky and shouted, “Darvon, must I take them all under my wing!”

  For one second all the girls in smokers’ corner turned toward us. I could hear my heartbeat, feel my brow heat up though the sky had chilled over. I liked talking to Edie but she was really weird. Hovering over me, her purple eyes shooting through their heavy black frames and violet lips glowing, she looked like some kind of hybrid, a girl-monster. All the rumors I’d heard about her flashed like billboards across my cerebral cortex. Maybe she was from another planet. Maybe she was just trouble. There was a recklessness to her, like she could do something really bad. One of the smoking girls said, “What a slut!” and they laughed as their soundtrack quickened over the wind.

  “USE-LESS!” Edie shouted at them, then turned to me. “Open yourself up a little,” she said. “Things are never just what they seem.” She walked away, jet-black hair swinging against her faded jean jacket. I watched her disappear into the naked brown trees.

  A couple months later she was in my house. “What’s his name?” she asked, fingering that picture of my father in his bathing suit. It was covered with one-dollar bills.

  “Jack.”

  “Jack,” she nodded. “I like it.”

  As if he might have had to change it if she didn’t. She was that sure of her opinions. She put down the photograph and said we should listen to some music. Behind my eyes came a dull throbbing. I wasn’t supposed to touch Jack’s stereo. And all my music was upstairs, including some CDs. I loved the little plastic jackets, those sparkling discs with their rainbow beams, the crisp scratchless sound. It was like stealing a piece of the future. Jack had CDs but kept all of his albums, too. Edie was skipping through them, saying what a massive collection, too bad there was so much hippie music, my parents must have been hippies. “Not really,” I said. “They were too busy.”

  Edie nodded. “Mine too. You were born in ’69, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Me too. And I even have an older brother. My parents spent the sixties changing diapers.”

  “Mine were in school. College was, like, such a big deal for them. Now it’s, like, who cares?”

  Edie laughed. “I know, totally. Training camp for zombies.”

  “You look at most famous people today, and they never went to college.”

  “That’s my point exactly. Nobody around here’s going to teach you anything important. It’s all about life experience. Can we smoke in here?”

  “Sure,” I smiled. “But hold on a sec, okay? I’ll be right back.”

  Edie said fine, she’d pick out a record. I went upstairs to Jack’s drawer, detached a bright green bud from his stash, and was crossing the balcony from my parents’ wing to mine when I heard a crash of drums and guitar and looking down saw Edie standing in front of Jack’s stereo banging her head from left to right and back again. If Jack found out he’d be royally pissed, but what could I do? I stood for a couple of minutes watching Edie bounce up and down, pumping her fists in front
of her, and I thought, I could never walk into someone’s house, put on the stereo, and dance alone. Who did she think she was? I crushed the bud in my hand. At that very moment, Edie looked up and saw me standing on the balcony. “Hey!” she shouted. “What are you doing up there?”

  I said, just wait, she’d know soon enough, and she shrugged, then swung her arms up over her head and continued dancing. I stopped off in my room to turn on the VCR. (A few months later I would know how to set the timer.) It was almost three and I didn’t want to miss World. My favorite thing about videotape: you could be in two places at once. I hit Play and Record just as the theme song was coming on and then hopped downstairs. Edie was still swinging her body in front of the stereo when I returned with the crushed-up bud. She stopped and took it in her hand. “Holy shit!” she shouted, breathing heavily. “Where’d you get this? Have you been seeing the Ayatollah? No, this doesn’t even look like his shit, doesn’t look like anybody’s I’ve ever seen. I know practically everyone, and why’s it so crumbly? … You gotta learn how to take better care of your pot. Something like this should really go in the refrigerator.”

  “Yeah, right next to the milk and OJ. Maybe in the butter dish.”

  “All right, smarty pants, but you can be more clever about it. I keep mine in one of those ham tins underneath my bed. At the very least you should isolate a cool, dark place. Trust me, I know about these things.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “So, come on, what gives? Where’d you get it?” She looked at me hard. In the background a woman wailed about a river. Edie bounced over to the stereo and turned it down. “Ike and Tina, baby! One of the least corny albums I could find. Now, come on, tell me everything. I haven’t seen dope this green since Andy—that’s my brother, he’s at UCSD but he’s not, like, a jughead. He plays football and grows pot in his backyard and has a band … they’re called Black Box and they’re excellent and they once played in the same club as the Buttholes. You’d really like him, Lil …”