“I drove a few blocks down the street but pulled over when I came to a sign for the entrance to the turnpike out of town. Where was I going? How about north to Boston? New Orleans? Chicago? But if I was going to follow that kind of spontaneous yellow brick road, I wanted to start from the real beginning, which was back in old Glenside. Besides, even though I no longer had my mother, much less a home, if I really was going to leave this part of the country for good, I wanted to see the old stomping grounds one last time. Our house, the places where I used to hang out, my high school. So I made up my first destination of that trip—Glenside, Pennsylvania.
“You can get there from New York in a few hours, even driving slowly. I was in no hurry. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I got there. Take a last look, smell the air a little, get my bearings back… whatever. There was a radio in the car and I sang along with it the whole way down. Things felt good. There really is a lot to be said for traveling light. Dropping whatever you have in your hands and movin’ out. One of the games I played while driving was trying to remember what I’d actually packed in the bag. There wasn’t much.”
“You’re the second woman I’ve known who’s run away from her man. The other said when she opened her bag later most of what was in there was underwear.”
“Underwear, exactly! The same with me. What does that say about girls on the run? With me it’s not hard to figure out—being clean again. Taking a shower, then putting on fresh underpants and a bra is always a total psychic lift. Sounds silly, but it never fails to make me feel new again. And I definitely needed to feel new after what’d been going on those last weeks.
“I drove into Glenside about nine that night. First thing I did was cruise by our house, but no lights were on and no car was in the driveway. It brought me way down. If only the place had been lit up like it was when I was young. Walking home in the winter after volleyball practice when you were tired and cold, you’d come over the hill at Teresa Schueller’s house and there was your home, lit up and warm-looking, the yellow porch lights on in front, maybe smoke coming out of the chimney. Mom would be in the living room reading her book till you came in, we’d kiss, and she’d go to the kitchen to finish cooking dinner now that everyone was home…
“She was dead and my father was probably down at the Masonic Hall with his buddies or with a dull woman who was as sad and stupid as him. Driving there, I thought I’d had no expectations other than to see the place and then move on to wherever the rest of my life would happen. But there was our house and it was dark, smaller than I remembered, and the bushes in front had been cut down so low they had no more shape. Those stumpy bushes started me crying, and I peeled out of there like a kid in a drag race.
“I drove to a bar in town and was there about fifteen minutes when a guy named Mark Elsen came up and said hi. Mark was one of those sweet guys from high school who are kind of drippy but have a crush on you. Most of them go into the Army after graduation, but eventually end up back in town afterward running the family appliance store. In school I knew he liked me and would come over to talk whenever he got up the nerve. He was actually rather good-looking and nice, but dull as an empty cardboard box.
“On the other hand, who was I to talk? There I was at the bar, ladies and gentlemen, Miss Lily Vincent, half a day away from a marvelous life as a burnt-out, doped-up loser who’d spent last night in a stranger’s bed as baksheesh for a drug deal, most likely.
“Mark was probably both the best and the worst person I could have bumped into that night on the face of the earth. He was so delighted to see me, so happy I’d come home and we’d bumped into each other. I felt adored.”
“Wasn’t that good for your ego?”
“Yes, for about an hour, but then reality came back, and no matter what he thought, I knew who I was and how close the demons were.
“To make matters worse, I did the most pathetic thing and could not stop myself. He kept asking what I was up to in ‘the Big Apple.’ He kept referring to it like that, like he was hip too ‘cause he knew the nickname. Which only made him more heartbreaking. ‘So what’s going on with you up in the Big Apple? Acting school, huh? Got a Hollywood contract yet?’ Not an ounce of cynicism in the way he said it. He assumed I was already a great success and would be out in L.A. knocking ‘em dead in no time. Know what I did? Started lying. Told him the most outrageous whoppers and fantasies. Like I was in this elite acting class at NYU taught by Dustin Hoffman. I was going to be in an Andy Warhol film soon, and I hung around the Factory with Lou Reed… It embarrasses me even now to think about it. Later he admitted he didn’t know half the people I’d mentioned, but it sounded tremendous. That was his word: tremendous. Whatever I said, he’d say, ‘Tremendous, Lily. That’s tremendous.’ He bought me drinks and a steak sandwich while I slung the bullshit. He kept shaking his head and saying ‘tremendous,’ like he couldn’t get over my magnificence. Such a nice guy. I didn’t have to do that. He thought I was great without any fluff. I could just as easily have cried on his shoulder and told him what was really happening. He would’ve been sympathetic.”
“You said those lies for yourself, not him. You wanted life to be the way you described it. It was a performance. For him, you were the actor in the Warhol film, the girl who knocked them dead in New York. Nothing wrong with that.”
“No, nothing wrong. Sad. End-of-the-line sad. It got so bad that he was asking me what Warren Beatty was like. I sat there with a cigarette in my hand, looking off into deep space like I was seriously considering his question, and said, ‘I like him, but I know people who don’t.’ ”
That made me laugh. Lily joined in and it was as if a wave of relief flooded over us both in the dark nervous bedroom. I knew what was coming, knew we were moving toward it like the top of a long staircase, but this laughter now let us stop and catch our breath before the last push.
“It is funny, isn’t it? We talked for another couple of hours and got a little drunk. Not much, but enough to make him more impressed and me more daring. I was the one who suggested we go out and take a drive somewhere. Out in the parking lot, he asked if I’d like to go in his car. When I said yes, he pointed to a brand-new Camaro Z-28. A really beautiful, souped-up thing that sounded like a jet plane when he started it. I remember ‘Z-28’ because it sounded so technical and dangerous, like a weapon, but when I asked Mark what it meant, he didn’t know.