Zelda looked surprised. “An albacore? Oh! You mean an albatross.”
“See. Stupid.”
“Self-pity speaking again?”
“Ben won’t want me.” She gestured at her soft belly, her dented brain. “I know what I am. I’m. I’m . . .” She searched for the right word. “Crappy broken. A crappy broken fat lady. Fuck. Hate shit.”
“Maddy, we must get your self-image in line with reality. You can’t keep walking this same road.”
“How do I. Stop?” she asked. “Saying all crap. In my head?”
“Time. Patience. Retraining.” She paused. “There may be times you’ll appreciate it, Maddy. You’ll be able to say things you never could before.”
“Sometimes. I get mad. So mad.” She shook her head. “Don’t even. Know why.”
“Frustration. There’s much more inside you than you can possibly say or even cope with knowing. Thus, it becomes soup. But slowly you’ll catch up.”
“All the way?” she asked.
Zelda laced her fingers and brought them to her chin. “I know you want me to say yes, absolutely yes. But truthfully, I don’t know how far you’ll go in getting back. This is trial and error to some degree. Some of it will be dumb luck.” She rocked toward Maddy and looked her in the eye. “But a large portion is about you—how much work you’re willing to do.”
CHAPTER 31
Emma
Emma clicked the remote.
Off.
On.
Off.
If her father was home, it would drive him mad. But he wasn’t. He’d barely noticed she hadn’t gone to school.
Fine.
That’s what he said when she told him she had a headache. Fine. Fine that she had a headache? Fine that she was staying home? Fine what, Dad?
Clearly, he’d forgotten today was her actual birthday. Her mother didn’t even know. Nobody forgot Halloween. Oh, no! That was for the little kids—Aunt Vanessa practically built the Eiffel Tower for them.
Okay then, fine. Staying home would be her birthday gift. Not that Sunday’s birthday pizza hadn’t been simply wonderful. Oh, it was simply terrific! The same pizza they’d have again tonight, because Tuesday was pizza night at the Illicas. Not to mention pizza Thursday. Oh, and absolutely, that crappy supermarket apple pie had been more than enough! And of course she hadn’t minded having her great big special birthday pizza celebration on Sunday because today, her real birthday, wasn’t convenient. Not with pills for Mom, rehab visits for Mom, and therapist meetings for Mom. Can’t squeeze a birthday cake in there—not with needing to make it all about Mom 24-7. Too bad her father hadn’t lavished this attention on Mom before he smashed her up.
Nobody had even baked their traditional moka-choka-latta birthday cake, the one her mother had named from the “Lady Marmalade” song. Every birthday her mother sang the song in her off-key voice as she measured flour and sugar, accompanying Patti LaBelle like a backup singer. After stirring and creaming, folding espresso into the chocolate frosting, her mother would play it again and again, turning the volume louder and louder, until Emma, Gracie, and Caleb were drawn to the kitchen.
Sunday night—her so-called early birthday celebration—had been wretched. Gracie bought Emma a biography of Florence Nightingale and a chocolate bar. Caleb drew a crazed house picture with a roof made of cookies and a door made of carrots. Before, her mother would have diagnosed the picture, making up an entire funny story of how it represented the inside of Caleb’s mind. Instead, Mom slouched there looking sad-trying-to-look-happy.
Emma’s father gave her a card with five twenty-dollar bills.
“Next year,” her mother had said.
“Next year what?” Emma supposed she had sounded bitchy since her father had given her a dirty look and answered for her mother.
“Next year we’ll go to the fanciest hotel in Boston,” her father had said.
“No,” Caleb said. “The Swiss Alps!” He and Gracie had recently watched Heidi on DVD.
Her mother looked so depressed by the entire thing that Emma spent the rest of the night acting as though everything were fine, wonderful, great—the best birthday in the world! Pie! Pizza! What had Emma expected anyway? Piles of presents while her mother tried to remember the name of the president?
So fine, no big deal.
• • •
Later that afternoon, Emma and Zach sat at one of the tables dotting the plaza by the so-called Pit—the Harvard Square hangout. At four o’clock, kids jammed the place. Emma supposed Zach would rather be almost anywhere else, but she liked it, and anyway, he’d asked where she wanted to go for her birthday. Street poets recited, and dancers spun on the concrete displaying their blazing gymnastics. Three women whose bottom halves were hidden behind a large wooden crate pulled the strings on puppets dressed as soldiers and Middle Eastern children. Emma leaned forward for a better view.
“I told you this was a stupid idea,” Zach said. “All anyone here wants is for people to look at them and think how cool they are. So much for being different if all you want is for people to admire your differentness. Do you know what I mean?”
“I think they look pretty cool,” Emma said.
“No, you don’t. You’re just saying that. I can tell.” He caught her hand across the white iron table. “Want to eat something?”
She shrugged.
“So what do you want to do? You asked to come here. A bookstore?” He pointed to the Harvard Coop across the street.
“Can’t we just stay here and watch?” she asked.
Zach sighed and stretched his legs. Emma wanted to run, race, dance in the middle of the Pit.
The pill she’d swallowed before meeting Zach raced through her.
Now she had five left. She’d counted them out as though they were tiny palace guards, designed for the express purpose of keeping her sadness out of the kingdom. And when they were gone? If she asked Caro for more, it would seem as though she’d moved from needing help as she took care of everyone in her family to being a grubby little addict.
That was it. When they were gone, they were gone.
“Fine,” Emma said. “You win. Let’s go for a walk.”
He smiled, stood, and held out his hand. “Want to walk through the Yard?”
She didn’t. Nothing sounded more boring than scuffing through the leaves in Harvard’s barren quadrangles. She wanted to go to stores and sift through piles of glittery junk. Smear on nectarine-scented lotions. Taste root-beer-flavored lip gloss. Try on black leather jackets. She should be here with Caro.
“Fine,” she repeated.
They walked through Harvard Yard in silence. Intent-looking students hurried by. Gray afternoon light cast gloominess on the sterile-looking quadrangle. Tourists held cameras. Mothers pushed strollers. Professors with briefcases looked important.
“This is depressing,” Emma said.
Zach looked at her. “Do you realize the history that’s here? I’ll probably apply here.”
She grabbed his hand and squeezed. “Hug me?”
He pulled her in. The silver birthday bracelet he’d given her caught on her sweater.
Zach’s body felt slight against her. She leaned her head against his shoulder—they were almost the same height. A few feet away a kid with a metal-studded face handed money to an emaciated guy with stringy hair covering his eyes.
Pills? Pot? Something worse?
Emma thought of the bottles rattling around her mother’s medicine cabinet since the accident. What would it be like tuning out all the time? Did you forget things? Did you disappear? Emma already felt invisible to her family. Had that happened to her mother? Would her whole family disappear soon with all their forgetting?
“Let’s go somewhere else,” Zach said. “How about my house? We’ll have dinner with my parents. They’d love it. My father will even run out and get you a cake.”
Emma couldn’t think of a worse way to end the day than having a mercy cake. “I should go h
ome.”
“You said your grandmother was there, right?” Zach gave her a giant grin. “It’s your birthday. Come on.”
“Well . . .” Emma pictured herself tied up in knots by his parents. Smiling, yessing, and saying Oh, this is delicious while wanting to cry or break a plate. Was that how her mother felt—always saying yes to her father when half the time she meant no?
“I don’t want to go to your house,” Emma said. “It’s my birthday. Take me to the movies, okay?”
• • •
Emma kicked at the film of slush in front of her house. Despite the darkness and the sudden icy rain, she’d walked home from the bus stop as slowly as possible. She opened the front door quietly, hoping to avoid facing anyone. She perched at the edge of the hall bench to take off her muddy boots. She tiptoed until she saw her father pacing in the kitchen as he spoke on the phone.
“Sometimes I just don’t know how long I can keep this up, Kath,” her father complained into the receiver.
Her father must have ticked off Kath because his next words were, “Am I supposed to be punished forever?” After a long pause, he said, “I know. You’re right. It’s just . . . What the hell. I guess this is my sentence.”
Emma slipped farther down the dark hall. The television was on in the living room. It was always on, the heartbeat of their house. She sped up when she heard her father’s the-conversation-is-over voice.
“Right, right. Right. I know. I know.” Emma recognized her father’s growing impatience. “I have to go, Kath.”
Her father called her name from the kitchen, preventing her from heading upstairs. Emma backed up and stuck her head in, watching as he placed a greasy-looking plate in the dishwasher.
“Home pretty late, aren’t you?” he asked.
“I called. You weren’t home. I told you I was having supper at Caro’s,” she lied. “It’s only eight o’clock.”
“It’s a school night.”
Emma didn’t say anything to his brilliant observation. She watched him carefully place each dish into the correct slot. It had always bugged her father how haphazardly her mother loaded the dishwasher.
Now he got to put in every dish just how he wanted. Happy, Dad?
“What did you have for supper?” he asked.
“Bagels and cream cheese.”
“That’s it?” He lifted his eyebrows.
“And salad,” she lied again.
He grabbed a faded yellow towel and began drying one of Grandma Anne’s baking dishes.
“Did you have dessert?” he asked. “Grandma sent over rice pudding. Homemade. With the yellow raisins you like.”
Hearing him try so hard made her want to cry, and she was so tired of feeling sorry for people. “No, thanks, Dad.” She turned to leave.
“Sit for a minute, Em. I want to talk to you.”
Rolling her eyes, she sat, bringing her knees up to her chin and hugging them. “Where’s Mom?”
“Resting. She seemed upset, so I gave her a pill,” he said. “Honey, why are you always running out?”
“Running out? I’m here all the time! Who takes care of Caleb and Gracie practically every day that Grandma isn’t here? Me. Who does almost all the cleaning? Me.”
“Mom’s doing a lot more than before.”
Emma kept her mouth shut. Her mother cleaned and cooked a little more now, but it was slow and painful—painful for Emma anyway. Watching her mother think so hard about where the dust rags were or how to fold sheets. Everything done in baby steps.
“You’re hanging out with that boy too much.” Her father bent, picking up a Cheerio from the floor.
“ ‘That boy’?” Emma laughed. “News flash, Dad, Zach is the straightest boy in the world. He makes me look insanely wild.”
Her father didn’t look particularly comforted. Emma read his mind: They all want the same thing. Don’t trust anyone.
“Nevertheless, I’d like to have you home more,” he said.
Emma slumped and toyed with the sugar bowl her father had bought to replace the one her mother broke. This one was plain white, and Emma hated it. Tipping it back and forth, feeling the sugar tilt with each movement, she tried to think of what to say. Her father sat across from her.
“Are you going to answer me?” he said.
“I didn’t hear a question, Dad. You just said you’d like me home more. That’s a statement.”
He took an obvious breath for control. “I don’t know if you understand. I need you on my side.”
Emma rested her head on her knees again. She looked down as she answered him. “It’s just too sad here. I hate being home. It’s like being punished every second.” She thought of throwing her missed real birthday at him, but when she looked up, she couldn’t—she wished she’d kept her mouth shut. Looking at him hurt, he seemed so old—like Grandpa Benedikte but without the bravery.
He nodded. Too slowly. “Okay. I get it.” He turned back to the dishwasher.
Now she wished she’d never said a word.
• • •
Something crashed. Emma looked at the clock.
“Goddamn it!” her father swore from the hall.
Nine thirty. She crouched on the bed, listening.
Emma threw down her Latin book and ran into the hall. Her father’s too-red face looked like an imminent heart attack; his lips were set in a thin line. Her mother came out of their bedroom twisting and untwisting the belt tying her faded bathrobe.
Her father kicked the overturned laundry basket and then punched his fist against the bathroom door.
“Damn it, Maddy, you put dirty clothes away again! I had to take a load of pissy underwear from Caleb’s dresser. Don’t I do enough without having to undo everything you screw up? Do me a favor, okay? If you can’t do it right, don’t do anything.”
“You didn’t. Have to . . .” Her mother took deep ragged breaths.
“What? I didn’t have to what, Maddy? Clean? Wash?”
“She means you don’t have to yell, Dad,” Emma said.
“What’s wrong?” Gracie ran out of her room in her nightgown, curls flattened on one side of her head, springing wildly on the other.
“Go back to bed,” her father barked.
Gracie stiffened into a robot child and stiff-tip-toed to Emma, who pulled her in close.
“Trying. To help.” Her mother backed up until she stood against the wall.
Her father slammed scattered clothes back into the basket.
“I’ll take care of it, Dad,” Emma said. She came forward, holding out her hands.
“No, no, no.” He held out his hand to ward her off. “The laundry is too sad for you, and of course it’s too difficult for your mother. So just like everything else, it becomes my responsibility.”
“Dad, I said I’d take care of it.”
“And I said go back to your room.”
“Stop,” her mother begged.
“Stop what?” her father yelled. “Stop taking care of everything? Stop and let you screw things up more? I have to go through every fucking piece of clothing in the house to see which is dirty and which is clean.”
“I said I’d do it,” Emma said for the third time. She wedged herself between her parents and looked up at her father. “Leave Mom alone; she’s trying.”
Her mother sank to the floor and wrapped her arms tightly around her legs, her body shaking. Gracie ran to her. “Stop it, Daddy,” she said. “You’re scaring Mommy.”
Emma watched the rage seep out of her father, as though Gracie’s words had pulled out a stopper. He brought a hand to his head and ran it repeatedly over his crazed hair. Finally, he stepped over to where Gracie and her mother cowered and knelt before them.
“Mother of God,” he said. “Listen, I’m sorry. Christ Almighty. I’m sorry, Mad, okay? You know how I get when my buttons get pushed. Stop crying. Please, okay? No more.” His words didn’t match his tone. Even as he apologized, he sounded angry.
“You shouldn’t talk
to Mommy like that,” Gracie said.
Her mother lifted her tear-stained face. “It’s. Okay. Daddy is. Upset.”
Emma thought she would throw up from hating her father, or punch the wall like him, or start throwing everything in the hall down the stairs—the phone table, the laundry basket, Gracie’s backpack. She had that whizzy dirty feeling that came in the hours after taking one of Caro’s pills.
“You just made a mistake, Mom. Don’t apologize for him.” Emma turned to her father. “At least she’s trying. You’re such an idiot, Dad.”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” her father said, his lawyer voice suddenly available to him. “Go to your room. Now.” He thrust his finger at her chest. “Go! You too, Gracie. Both of you. Back to sleep. Show over.”
Emma didn’t move an inch. Her mother and Gracie huddled together as though they lived in a mental institution.
“Don’t put this on me!” she yelled. “I’m sick of pretending. I’m not going to make believe everything is fine while you go around making everyone miserable.”
“I’m not telling you again, Emma.” Her father came toward her, his face tightening.
“You started it, Daddy,” Emma screamed. “It’s your fault, so don’t get mad at anyone else.”
“Just get the hell into your room!” her father said. “I can’t take another minute of shit from you.”
Emma whirled around to face her mother and Gracie, planting her feet wide apart, jamming her hands on her hips, and leaning forward. “It’s his fault, Mom. He’s the reason you’re like this. He drove like a madman in the rain. A maniac. That’s what Grandpa said. And they’re making a case against him. In court. Reckless driving. Weaving. Driving to endanger. Endanger. If he didn’t drive like a lunatic, you’d be just fine. Daddy told us not to tell. He made us lie. But it was all his fault.”
The sudden silence sounded louder than all the shouting.
Emma ran into her room and slammed the door.
CHAPTER 32
Ben
“Come on, Maddy. Let me in.” Ben, hoarse from pleading, put his ear against the locked bedroom door, listening for sounds of life. Soon it would be midnight, but the kids were all awake, huddled in Emma’s room, waiting for him to fix everything. Jesus, what the fuck was Maddy doing in there? Was she asleep? Locked in the bathroom with the pill bottles lined up like bullets? How long could he wait for Maddy to open the door on her own?
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