Take Me With You When You Go

by David Levithan

  Neutral ground, Bea. I figured this would be neutral ground. I want this to be a business transaction, not a scene. And maybe I thought she’d still have a little of her professional demeanor from the day, like when someone from work would call the house and when she was talking to them, she sounded like the most levelheaded, reasonable person you could ever expect to find.

  I was right about her getting ready to leave. Her jacket is in her hand, her purse on her shoulder.

  She says, “If you want to talk, you can come to the house later, when we’re all present.”

  We’re all. I notice that you aren’t included in this tally. But I don’t point that out because, as I said, I’m trying to keep it professional.

  “No,” I tell her. “I only want to talk to you.”

  I’m not intentionally blocking the doorway, but the reality is that I’m blocking the doorway.

  I can see her make the calculation—other people might still be around, and it’s probably better to have me in a contained environment. She gestures me in, then puts her jacket and her purse down on a side chair as I close the door behind me.

  She goes to the other side of her desk, and for a second I think she’s going to sit down and tell me to sit down across from her, like I’m here to talk about an audit, or to set financial planning goals for the next tax year. But she stays standing. She wants the desk between us.

  “I don’t know what to say to you,” she states. “Ever since your sister left, you have acted deplorably. I hoped that her departure would have freed you of her influence, but instead it seems to have amplified it.”

  “This isn’t about her.”

  “Isn’t it? She’s trying to turn you against us. And you’ll believe everything she says. Beatrix can do no wrong in your eyes. But she can do plenty wrong, Ezra. You just refuse to see it.”

  “That’s not true!” I argue.

  She looks at me the same way she must’ve when I’d been learning to spell and had assumed cat started with a k. “Let me guess,” she says. “You came here to accuse me and Darren of ruining your life. Or of being horrible parents. You’d much rather have been with your father. Your sainted, blameless father. Or maybe you would have been better off on your own. That’s apparently how Bea feels. And whatever she feels, you’ll feel too. You were always like that, following her around, mimicking her actions. She needed a Band-Aid, you wanted one. She insisted she had a fever, then you insisted you were hot. And when I took your temperature and showed you both you didn’t have fevers, that didn’t matter. All that mattered was what your sister felt. I had thought you’d outgrow it, and for a while it seemed like you had. She went out of control, but you didn’t veer after her. That was a relief. But not now, Ezra—now you’re both being awful.”

  This feels a little one-sided to me. “We’re being awful?” I spit out. “Darren practically knocks me out in front of Terrence’s neighbors the other day, and we’re the ones being awful.”

  “You’re awful when you provoke us. You can’t say you haven’t provoked us. Setting the house on fire! I had to pretend that I’d left the paper towels near an open flame. That’s what I told the fire department. Covering for you, Ezra. You. And the childish things you did to the things in my purse—that’s what a four-year-old does to get attention. I think it’s more than understandable that Darren was upset at your behavior, and how ungrateful you’ve been behaving. All you had to do was get into the car when we asked, Ezra. After what you did with the fire, I think it was incredibly forgiving of us to invite you back. Darren was so mad at you, and I didn’t blame him. But he was willing to let you come home. He told me that. You just threw it back in his face.”

  “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation! Can you hear yourself?”

  “I know you think you know everything, Ezra, but you don’t. I’m sorry, but you don’t. Darren has been my rock in more ways than you can ever know. He saved our family after your father’s cruelty. I could not have done it on my own. I only had so much to give, and you both had so much to take. Sometimes I told myself your father had no idea. But other times I thought he knew exactly what he was doing, leaving just when it was getting hard. Well, Darren was up to that challenge. If I’d been him, I would’ve run far, far away, but he didn’t run. He loved me when I thought no one would. And he still does. It’s not my fault if you kids never liked that. You wanted me all to yourself, and that’s just not the way it works, Ezra. Darren’s always tried very hard to treat you and Bea as if you were his own children, even though you have never made the least attempt to treat him that way in return.”

  I can’t help it. I yell, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Predictably, she bursts out with, “Watch your language!”

  Remember the time Darren said that to you, and you said, “How can I watch something that’s not visible? Are there subtitles I should be seeing?”

  I almost say the same thing now. But instead I go with, “No, Mom, you watch your language. You watch every fucking lie that comes out of your mouth. When I was four or ten or even fourteen, I might have believed them. Not now.”

  She pounds her hand on her desk. “I don’t have to stand here and be insulted—”

  I pound her desk right back. “YES YOU DO. You have to stand there and tell me why you chose to love him and not us. You have to stand there and listen to me when I say that it never made sense to us, how he could be so good to you and so awful to us. You have to stand there and explain why you hid us from our father. You have to make me understand why you have stood there and stood there and stood there while Darren attacked us and destroyed our things and undermined us and hurt us and made sure we’d never, ever feel welcome in our own home. You want to tell me that he’s your rock? He saved you? Well, that shouldn’t have been enough. I don’t get it—you stole us from our father. And for what? So we could suffer on your terms instead of his? Bea found him, Mom. We know what happened.”

  She shakes her head. “You have no idea. No idea whatsoever.”

  “Of what? Tell me.”

  It’s like something in her cracks open in front of my eyes. After living with her and studying her my whole life, somehow she comes up with a new expression, a look of such clarity and ferocity. We know what a mama bear looks like defending her cub. But what does she look like defending herself against her cub? “You have no idea what your father was like!” she yells. “You have no idea what he did to us. I protected the two of you from that. If there’s one thing you need to give me credit for, it is that. Even your cold, vicious, self-centered hearts have to recognize that. I have no idea how Bea found your father or what he’s been saying to her, but let me tell you, he never put your interests above his own. He was the one who wanted kids in the first place, but then when he had them, he changed his mind. He said I’d tied him down—well, let me tell you, Ezra, if I tied him down, I didn’t do a very good job on the knots. When I was pregnant with your sister, there’d be nights he wouldn’t come home, and his excuses wouldn’t even bother to dress themselves as excuses. No, they’d come clothed as blame. Maybe he said he was looking elsewhere because I was being a drag. Maybe he said he had to have a night out because he couldn’t stand another night in. The man who didn’t spend a single minute trying to understand me was always ready to point out that I didn’t understand him. And do you know what kind of fool I was? I tried to make it better! Whatever he may tell you now, I worked my ass off and burned out all my instincts in order to please him, in order to get him to stay. I made the meals. I never complained. I told him he was right even when he was wrong. And do you know how well that worked? When I told him I was pregnant with you, he responded by saying he’d already made another woman pregnant, and that he couldn’t be in both places at once. So guess which place won, Ezra. Guess why you never saw your father. If now, fifteen years later, you and your sister want to measure us against o
ne another, I’m sure I’ll lose, because I did a thousand things wrong while he did nothing at all. He didn’t deserve to be a part of your lives. If I was going to shoulder the burden, he was not going to have any part of the reward. Nothing you can say will convince me otherwise. He knew what he was doing the whole time. And now if he’s waltzing in, saying he’s the better parent—well, I’m sorry. I’m not going to accept that. And if you’re going to accept that, then I’m sorry I’ve raised such an ungrateful child.”

  I react to the only part I know how to react to in that moment. I tell her, “He’s not waltzing in.”

  She practically rolls her eyes. “No? Then what is he doing, reaching out now?”

  “He didn’t reach out. He’s dead.”

  At that moment, another new expression rises to the surface. But it doesn’t clarify into something solid. It wavers. She holds her hand out to her desk chair for balance. “What?”

  My tone goes from attack to explanation. “He’s dead. He died last year.”

  “But your sister—”

  “Bea went out there because our brother contacted her. The one who’s my age.”

  “I have to sit down,” she says, then does just that. “I don’t understand.”

  “My father’s dead. But honestly, this doesn’t have anything to do with him. This is about things that were there long before we found out about him.”

  “How can this not have anything to do with him? What are you saying, Ezra?”

  “I’m saying this is about Darren.”

  She lets go of the arm of the chair and puts her hand up to stop me. “No. Stop. I will not have you spew your ingratitude now. This isn’t the time for it.”

  Now it’s my turn to be exasperated. “It’s never the time for it.”

  “Darren has always treated me well.”

  “I know. But he hasn’t always treated us well.”

  “Because you haven’t treated him well.”

  “But we’re the children!”

  Mom shakes her head. “Bea hasn’t been a child for years. She’s been a selfish, combative teenager who’s wrung every ounce of happiness from our family.”

  “Do you believe that? Do you honestly believe that?”

  She sighs. “Yes, Ezra. I do.”

  “All those times Darren has yelled at us, has been cruel to us—even when he was pummeling me on Sunday—you think it’s our fault?”

  “I’m not saying I always approve of the way he handles things. I’ve talked to him about that. But you provoke him. The two of you always provoke him.”

  “How do we provoke him?”

  “Trying to burn down our house? Stealing from me? Having him arrested, Ezra? If those aren’t provocations, I don’t know what they are.”

  “How about self-defense?”

  She actually laughs at that. “Please.”

  That’s what does it, Bea. I realize she will never, ever see things our way. Even if she’s right about our father—and I have a sinking suspicion she is—it doesn’t excuse everything that came after. It might explain it, but it doesn’t excuse it.

  “You have to let Darren go,” I say, knowing exactly the response I will get.

  Sure enough, she replies, “I’m not going to do that. Why would I do that?”

  “Then you’re going to have to let me go. Bea’s already gone. Now I’m going to go too.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You may be choosing at this moment to block out all of the good times we’ve had together. You may be choosing to ignore the fact that we’ve raised you, supported you, and given you a lot of the qualities you now think are so diametrically opposed to us. You can conveniently erase all of that, just like your sister chose to do. But you can’t change the simple fact that we’re your family.”

  Where has she been living all these years, Bea? What has she been seeing?

  I say, “You never listen to me, but you need to listen to me now. Because this is what I’m saying: You’re not my family anymore. I have Bea. I have Terrence and his family. I have other friends, and I will find other family. If you want this to be ugly, we can make this really ugly. You can try to force me to come home. And I can call the police every time Darren threatens me or goes on the attack. I can make sure everyone in town knows what’s happening, and no matter what trash you try to spread about me, the truth will stick at least some of the time to you. Right now, I hate you both. I don’t want to. I don’t want to live like that. I will never feel anything other than hate for him. But for you? I might get to pity, and go from there. Time will tell. But for now, I’m out. As soon as I walk through that door, you are going to call Darren and have him take you to dinner. While you’re at the restaurant of your choosing, I will take two hours to go to our house and take the things I want from my room. Eventually Bea may come back for hers—I don’t know. What I do know is that your position of mom is no longer an automatic right. It is something that you need to earn. Starting now.”

  Her voice is calm. Certain. “I’m your mother. I’ll always be your mother.”

  “Yes,” I concede, “you control that fact. But I get to control what it means.”

  She pushes back in her chair and stares at me. “How did I raise two such unforgiving children?”

  And this time I’m the one who laughs. Especially since she genuinely doesn’t seem to know.

  “I think it’s something we learned at home,” I say.

  At that moment, she does the thing that almost destroys me. She looks at a frame on her desk, and from where I’m standing, I can see it’s a picture of us, Bea. Us next to each other on a swing set, you higher in the air, me giggling near the ground. Nobody is pushing us. We’re swinging on our own.

  “I’m going now,” I say gently. “If you want to call me in order to yell or demand or threaten, please don’t bother. If you want to call me to talk, I might not answer at first. But eventually I might. We’ll see.”

  She doesn’t nod. She doesn’t shake her head. She doesn’t react at all. It’s like she’s listening to music in another room.

  Only when I get to the door does she say something.

  “Is he really dead?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure your sister isn’t making that up?”

  “I’m sure,” I say. “Bea would never lie to me about that.”

  She shakes her head again. I think she believes me, but can’t believe the world.

  I leave the room. I like to think she notices I’m gone.

  Sorry, just need to take a moment here.

  * * *

  —

  Okay. What comes next. I hold my feelings in as I walk through the office, just in case I bump into someone. Joe is still waiting in the parking lot. He starts to barrage me with questions as soon as I get into the car.

  “Drive,” I say. “Go.”

  To his credit, he doesn’t say anything for a minute or two. Then he breaks the silence to ask, “Where are we going?”

  I don’t start crying until I say, “Home.”

  * * *

  —

  I tell him to stand guard, but he insists on coming in with me. Because we have no idea what Mom will do. If she tells Darren, he’ll storm in as soon as he can.

  “I’ve got your back,” Joe says, like we’re in a war movie. It’s both nice and annoying at the same time.

  At some point since I’ve last been in the house, my room has been pillaged in the same way yours had been pillaged. “Jesus,” Joe mutters as we walk in to see the contents of my drawers piled in the middle of the floor.

  “I need some trash bags,” I say.

  “I’ll get them,” Joe offers. And I think, oh yeah, he probably knows where they are.

  I only have about two minutes alone in that room, two minutes to size up fi
fteen years and decide what’s worth keeping. Was that how you felt, Bea, the night you left? How did you know what to take and what to abandon?

  Joe comes back with a whole box of leaf bags.

  “Err on the side of keeping,” he says. (I mean, of course he does.)

  But you know what? I listen to him. I take everything that’s meant even a little bit to me. I leave behind shirts I never wear and books I’ll never read again. When I find a cache of old birthday cards, from before Darren, I take one or two Mom gave me. I wonder if she’ll notice.

  I take anything that’s from you.

  When I’m done, and have made detours to the bathroom and the den, we have six very full trash bags. Joe brings them down to the car while I make sure I haven’t missed anything. My room already doesn’t feel like mine anymore. It’s just another room in Mom and Darren’s house.

  Before he lugs the last bag down, Joe says, “I guess they’re not coming.”

  I nod. I don’t think either of us truly believed we could do this without a fight.

  While he takes that last bag of mine to the car, I go into your room with another bag. I try to pick some things I know you once loved—Stella the Unicorn and the Monopoly we always played with the handmade pieces and maybe a drawing or two I made you when I was little; I figure if they’ve lasted this long, they deserve to last a little longer. There are some photos of you and Joe, and you and Sloane, and you and some kids I don’t recognize—I take those too. Better for you to have them than for Mom and Darren to get rid of them.

  I also take all of your Anne of Green Gables books. If you don’t want them, I’ll take them. I borrowed them enough, way back when.

  I hear a cough outside the door and nearly jump out of my skin. But it’s only Joe, keeping his distance, as if your room is a sacred space. I know it isn’t sacred to you anymore, but maybe it still is to him and to me. I’m sure he wants me to invite him in, but I don’t. I just tell him I’m ready to go.

  Most of the bags are now in Joe’s garage. I didn’t think it would be a good look for me to show up at Terrence’s house with seven large garbage bags of stuff. I’m starting with one, and we’ll go from there.