Lakewood Read online

  Lena shook Kelly’s hand. “So, your parents were lazy, right?”

  Stacy looked confused, but Kelly smiled wider. “Our mom was lazy. Our dad probably still wishes he could name us good, strong man names.”

  After a pause, the conversation started. Kelly was an MFA student in painting out in the Bay Area. He was interested in portraying the environment as it was, as it is, as it should be. Triptychs. Lena was impressed that he didn’t seem embarrassed about his art. She liked that his tone was soft, not loud enough to be overheard so people would think, Oh, wow, an artist is present. People were getting drunk now. Dancing. Tanya was trying the girl’s vape pen and making an unimpressed face.

  “I’ve heard so much about you,” Kelly said. “You’re quieter than I imagined, based on Stacy’s stories.”

  She looked down at her shoes. “Life’s been. Well, this isn’t a party conversation.” He pulled out a cigarette and his lighter, gestured toward the door. “Well, maybe it’s a smoking conversation.” The night was cold, windy. There were few people out, though it was a Friday. A much louder party down the block boomed out bass. Kelly offered her a cigarette, she shook her head. Just six months ago, Lena knew she would’ve been flirting with him. Or she would have been back inside dancing. Or at least would have been drinking.

  “Why are you so serious tonight?” Kelly asked.

  “My grandmother died a few weeks ago. And—” Her throat closed for a second. “Well, she was my grandma, but she was also my mom. Not in, like, a weird way. She just did a lot of the work in raising me.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” He was so earnest, as if he did have the power to make her life much better, all she had to do was ask. The skin on his hands shone underneath the golden porch light.

  “Do you want to take a walk?”

  He nodded, offered his arm. She put her arm through the crook of it.

  “So, why did your grandma raise you?”

  “I thought Stacy told you all about me.”

  “He did.” Lena was happy she couldn’t see his face. “But I want to hear your version of it. If that’s okay.”

  She told him that the first memory she had of her mother was of her having a seizure in their kitchen. Deziree had said something that was wrong right before it happened, and she had said to her mother, “Mom, that’s not how adults talk.” And then she was scared and called 911, then her grandma. And the people at the hospital told her grandma later that it was maybe because her mother fell on the ice earlier that day and something was hurt in her brain. Lena was in the room, listening in, pretending to be focused on her coloring book. She already knew adults somehow thought kids didn’t care what they did and said. Or maybe, the doctor continued, it wasn’t that—it was some sort of disease. It seemed as if all her limbs were arguing with the commands her brain was giving them. There could be many causes for that. She might be severely disabled for the rest of her life. And what were her plans?

  The doctor said it as if he was asking them what time they wanted to go get dinner, but her grandmother clasped Lena’s shoulders so hard they hurt, so she understood suddenly that somehow they were talking about death. Lena wished she was tall enough to look directly at her grandma’s face, to see what she thought of all this every time the doctors told her, essentially, we have no idea what’s going on, but everyone’s life is probably different now. But her grandma kept her quiet tone. Whenever they were alone, she would take Lena’s hands and start praying. Jesus will get us through this. “I guess,” Lena remembered replying. Though her mother was sick, she kept it secret that they never went to church except for when they were with Grandma. “Sure.”

  As she spoke, Lena was pleased that she didn’t sound like crying, that she was matter-of-fact: This is me.

  Lena and Kelly walked to the all-night diner across town and ordered hash browns with feta cheese and onions and tomatoes and coffee. Bacon on the side. They were talking about tacos, and she knew she liked him because, when he said it was impossible to get an actual good taco in this state, she didn’t want to slap him, only gave him a look that said, Do you hear yourself right now? He smiled. They talked about the most beautiful thing they had ever photographed. Joking at first, she said a pile of French toast with syrup and powdered sugar at brunch. And then, sentimental, her family laughing together. Kelly said it’s a cliché, but a sunrise over the ocean.

  A song by Davon came on about champagne and missing the girl who was sitting right next to him. Lena bopped her head a little bit to the beat.

  “Please tell me you don’t like Davon,” Kelly said. “He’s such a—”

  “I like him because 1) he’s good at making you think you’re the one who could change him. 2) He is cut. 3) He is perfect gossip. You can ask almost anyone alive, ‘You hear what Davon did?’ And either they’ll tell you everything or be, like, ‘No, tell me now.’”

  She was laughing. Everything she ate, even the unasked-for rye toast on the side, tasted good. Kelly’s eyes were dark and his eyelashes were so long, it was rude. And it was more rude that despite the fact that he had been drinking and smoking, she still thought he smelled good. The diner was filling up with punk kids showing up from the clubs down the street, talking loudly about the show, sweaty, touching their dyed and bleached hair and showing off the X’s Sharpied on the backs of their hands. Kelly paid and they walked back out into the cold night. All the bars were closing in the next half hour, so the sidewalks were busy again with drunk people finding food, tramping home, holding hands. The streetlights were orange-toned and made everyone look more dramatic. Snow flurries took bites out of everyone’s hair and cheeks. The apartment buildings and stores and courthouse looked taller in the semi-dark.

  Lena said, “So, I heard you do research studies.”

  “This is my nightmare,” Kelly answered, trying to wipe snow off his head. “The contacts.”

  “Is it uncomfortable? Or weird?”

  “Only when they do experiments where someone else has to take the contacts out of my eyes for me. Other than that, they pay pretty well.” He blew out a breath and the tiny cloud hovered and then fluttered away. “Why do you ask?”

  She told him about the letter in the mail.

  “That’s not too weird. It means someone probably just referred you or maybe you signed up for a list or something and just forgot.”

  Lena shrugged. They were back outside Stacy’s house. The party was still going inside.

  Kelly paused. “It was nice meeting you,” he said.

  In response, she smiled, leaned in, and kissed him. His lips were soft against hers. Lena had kissed enough people to know that kisses rarely said anything more than Please like me, or I like you, or Let’s have sex. But she hoped that somehow, he could feel the Thank you for helping me not to worry, not to grieve, for a few hours.

  “It was nice meeting you too,” she said.

  Inside, everyone was still drinking fortified wine.

  “It’s great,” Tanya said. “You can drink a cup and stay drunk for the rest of your life.”

  Lena nodded. Someone asked her again, Well, what are you doing this summer? It had been only seconds, but Kelly was swallowed up by the party. I’m figuring it out, Lena said. She leaned against the wall for extra support. The wine was turning the insides of everyone’s mouths black, despite the liquid being pale yellow.

  Tanya showed her tongue to Lena and said it reminded her of when she was a girl and a kid kept asking her why her teeth and tongue weren’t black. Shouldn’t they be? he kept asking. Did anything like that happen to you? Lena rolled her eyes. “Probably, but I’m happy to say I forgot if it did.”

  “We’re dying,” Stacy said, staring at himself in the long mirror next to the front door. His voice was pay-attention-to-me-now excited. “We’re dying.”

  Tanya cleared her throat and Stacy automatically apologized to Lena. She pretended to be confused about why he was apologizing to her until he stopped.

  “Let’s
take a picture,” Tanya said. Lena posed and stuck her tongue out as far as it would go.

  3

  They told Lena that to maintain privacy, all buildings were disguised as part of Great Lakes Shipping Company. The closest intake office to Lena was only a mile and a half walk from her dorm—she recognized the address when they said it. Most of the building had a rich-person-store feel, like the all-wood toy store and a high-end Taiwanese restaurant that Lena always wanted to try but couldn’t convince herself to pay $25 for an entrée. Great Lakes Shipping Company, the woman on the phone said, was on Floor 2. When you go up the stairs, walk past the drinking fountains, and it’s right across from the olive oil shop, A Living Liquid. It’s easy to miss, the woman said, and she was right—Lena’s eyes didn’t register it the first time, with its gray curtains over the window and the cream-on-white logo.

  She walked down to the end of the hall, turned around, and went back. The olive oil shop was brightly lit. Rows of copper dispensers, posters of Italy on the wall. A man was filling up a Styrofoam cup, clearly meant for coffee, with habanero-infused oil. Lena considered going in to try some—there were containers of bread next to each dispenser—and to see if he was truly going to drink it.

  It was better to be early, Lena decided, as she walked inside the office.

  Inside, a white woman with a haircut that looked as if she had shown her stylist an image of a motorcycle helmet and said, “That’s the look,” was waiting.

  “Your IDs.”

  Lena fished her wallet out of her coat pocket. The woman was wearing a navy pantsuit with an American flag pinned on the lapel. There was a badge clipped to her waistband. Walking over to her, Lena bumped into a small table and knocked over a stack of magazines. When she bent to pick them up, the woman told her to just leave it. Her tone was as if Lena had spent hours knocking over the magazines and picking them up and straightening them, just to knock them over again, and she couldn’t take it anymore. Lena handed over the IDs.

  “Looks good. Now we have some forms for you to fill out.” She led Lena into what might have been the grayest room in the world. Everything in it—chairs, desks, pens, flooring, wall tile, the fire extinguisher—elephant gray.

  The strangeness of the room and the woman’s brusque attitude made Lena want to joke, to find a way of rescuing herself from her discomfort. Instead, she reminded herself that now was the time to be pleasant, blank. Don’t be weird. Don’t embarrass yourself. The woman gestured at Lena to have a seat, handing her a clipboard and a pen.

  Page one asked for the basics: address, full legal name, place of birth, how she had found out about the study, email address, emergency contacts, have you ever been a participant in any other clinical studies? No, Lena wrote. Page two reminded her that to participate in the Lakewood Project was to consent to a necessary diminishment of her privacy. If you consent to this, provide all your passwords for social media, email addresses, phone passcode. Also provide any potential answers you can think of for standard security questions, such as the make of your first car, the name of your childhood pet, your mother’s maiden name.

  Lena coughed. “May I have a glass of water?”

  Page four was where the health questions began. Do you have any allergies? When was the last time you had vaginal intercourse? Anal? When was the last time, exact date if possible, that you vomited? Do you have a family health history of strokes, cancer, diabetes? Next to the paternal family heading, Lena wrote, Information not available. Her hands shook as she did it, assuming that when they saw that, it would make her ineligible. What’s the longest you’ve been consistently intoxicated for?

  She cleared her throat again. “May I have a glass of water?”

  “Please fill out the forms.”

  Lena stared at the white paper, let the words go out of focus. The woman’s attitude, the questions, made a small voice in her own head say you are already feeling weird, get out of here. Her grandma had cleaned houses, pulled the hair and gunk out of tubs and sinks, catered on the weekends, babysat, took odd jobs. Worked for people who she said were proof God had a sense of humor. Your grandmother gave you everything. You’re the one in charge now.

  She flipped the page. At the top, it said WELCOME in bold, underlined type. “Our most precious resources in this country are patriots like you, those who are willing to give of themselves to help this great nation. Your contribution will help end suffering and unhappiness.”

  “So.” Lena put down her pen. “This is a government program?”

  “Keep reading.”

  “But in my letter it said this was for a survey company.”

  The woman lifted her eyebrows in annoyance. “Read all of it, especially page nine.”

  After rigorous evaluations of her mental, physical, and emotional health, the form explained, she might be invited to join the study. Once she signed, all interactions were private.

  Lena flipped to page nine. It was an NDA. No questions about the studies and their true nature could be signed until she signed this page. There were $50,000 in penalties if she violated this agreement.

  Deziree had texted her earlier this morning to say that the electricity had been shut off and she was going over to Miss Shaunté’s. They had paid the electricity with the only credit card that wasn’t maxed out. Potential jail time. She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. It tasted of bad coffee and mint toothpaste.

  On their last day together, in retrospect, it seemed as if her grandmother had known somehow that it was the end. Lena knew this was how memory worked; looking back at an important day, everything could seem portentous. The apricity and brightness through her grandmother’s hospital room windows. How the hospital coffee tasted. As if they had switched to a better brand whose flavor could almost be described as coffee. The way her grandmother said, “You’re already doing a good job helping your mother. I’m so proud of you.” There had been a mixture of true compliment sweetness and warning sharpness in her grandmother’s voice as she said it.

  Lena signed. The woman smiled, took the clipboard, and said, Now we can get started.

  While waiting for further instructions from “Great Lakes Shipping Company,” Lena continued applying for other jobs. She came close to getting a job as a temporary worker at the post office. But according to her mom, it went to someone’s daughter. It was fine, though, Deziree had assured her, while reminding her that the post office is a corrupt institution filled with drug addicts and older white ladies who wore wraparound sunglasses inside. She was only half kidding.

  To her interview at Burrito Town, Lena wore Your-Honor-I-Plead-Not-Guilty and arrived five minutes early. She handed her résumé to the manager interviewing her. He scanned it, pursed his lips, and said, “Art History?”

  “That’s my major.” Lena smiled, hoped her voice sounded chipper enough.

  “So, what’s your greatest strength? Weakness?”

  She said that her greatest weakness was probably that she was too hard on herself. Tanya called it a case of the Dumb-Lena-Dumbs. “And my greatest strength—” Lena squeezed her knee. The manager was smoothing his blond mustache as she spoke. His skin was a shade of pink that made him look perpetually a little drunk. “I guess my greatest strength is that I’m good at being task-oriented and getting things done on time.”

  “Honestly, all I really care about is whether or not you can fit in the costume.”

  “Costume?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t think you’re ready to be a burrito maker,” he said. “Stand up.”

  Lena kept her face blank, pleasant as she stood. The manager also stood and took a step backward.

  “You are a very small person, you know that?”

  “Oh. I thought five-foot-two was tall.”

  “Whoever told you that was wrong.” His eyebrows were raised, as if he couldn’t believe she knew someone so stupid, or would be so simple as to believe that stupid person.

  She nodded, reminding herself there was no point in trying
to joke around with an old white man who thought you were an idiot.

  On the walls were large prints of burritos in the style of different artists. An Andy Warhol screen print, Van Gogh’s sunflowers with burritos instead of flower petals, a Lichtenstein burrito that was crying a single tear, a burrito with Frida Kahlo flower crown and eyebrows that Lena thought someone would complain about within a day of the location opening. The space smelled good, like sautéed red onions and fresh dough, though the restaurant wouldn’t open for another few weeks.

  “There’s no way you can be the burrito. But maybe you would be a good Ms. Blue Corn Chip. Smile, please.”

  Lena bared her teeth.

  “Bigger. People need to see you from their cars. Come on, I know you have it in you.”

  Lena smiled.

  “Smile like you’re looking at your best friend.”

  She pictured an alligator plotting against her enemies. A large, openmouthed grin.

  “People like to feel invited.” He gestured at her mouth. “Keep trying.”

  She stretched her lips the widest they could go, knowing she was making more of a welcome-to-my-death-house face than a spend-all-your-money-on-these-burritos face. Her cheeks ached after 10 seconds of it. Lena held it another five, another 10, felt her cheeks trembling, and stopped.

  “Your teeth are a nice shade of white,” the manager said. He wrote a note on his clipboard and underlined it. “We would only need you three days a week, during the first two months after the grand opening.”

  The manager ran his fingers over his mustache. He tapped the side of his face, then spoke as if offering Lena a hundred-thousand-dollar salary with unlimited vacation time. “And if you do well at this and can prove that you’re reliable, we can talk about you moving up to the assembly line.”

  “How much does being the chip pay?”

  “Nine-twenty-five an hour. And if you make it to the assembly line, you’ll go up to nine-fifty.”

  “I’ll take it,” Lena said. Money was money.

  “We’ll call you,” the manager said.