I sat up on the couch. No wonder, I thought. No fricking wonder.
When I’d told her about my pregnancy by Greg, she’d seemed stricken as one would expect a mother to feel for a twenty-two-year-old daughter living alone in a crummy apartment with a data entry job and few marketable skills beyond typing and answering a phone. We were sitting in my apartment in fact. I’d asked her to come over, pacing with the phone in one hand and the pregnancy test in the other. Stringing beads into pretty necklaces—my artistic attempt at a career—would hardly support a baby, and I believed her distress to be related to that fear: How would we get by? Not to mention the moral failing of my actions, though Mother never was one to judge such things harshly.
But when I wondered aloud whether I should give the baby up, to some other couple who wanted a child, she grabbed my hand in both of hers so hard it hurt. “Don’t you dare,” she’d said, her hazel eyes filming over with tears behind her large round glasses. “I don’t care if I have to sell everything I own to support you, that child is my flesh and blood as much as yours.”
I assured her I had no such plan, I was just thinking out loud, just scared, just wondering. The outburst had seemed overly strident, considering the circumstances, but in a moment or two I’d explained it away to myself: she’d simply wanted to know her grandchild.
But now. Now I understood. And nothing would seem simple again.
My front door swung open, and Drew sloped in, his eyes looking red under all that black. Bizarrely, his eyeliner was smudged. I couldn’t wait for him to grow out of that stupidity.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” I said, noticing it was hours later than he said he’d be. He’d missed out on the pizza, and the hockey game he was going to watch with Ron would be nearly over by now.
Drew came over and plopped down next to me. Not on the other side of the couch, but right next to me. Then he stunned me by leaning over and resting his head on my shoulder. He had to slouch dramatically sideways to do it, being so tall.
“Honey?” I asked.
“We broke up.”
I turned to face him, and he let me hug him, awkward and sideways, as he rested his head on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” I said, because I was sorry, though I never liked Miranda and had honestly been hoping for this day. But you never want to see your children hurt, even for their own good. I cried over their flu shots, too.
“What happened?”
“I don’t want you to feel guilty.”
“OK,” I said, drawing the word out, prompting him to go on.
He sat back from me a bit, leaning sideways on the couch. He looked past me as if to see out the front window, though the light was failing and there was little to see but shadow.
“She started out saying she was sorry that she couldn’t stay and help, and then she started carrying on about how weird you were, and how gross the house was, and I’m, like, really? This is my mom and you’re gonna say this shit to me? So I called her on it. I told her that’s not cool, that I know you’ve got problems, but still. So then she said it’s more than just ‘problems’ and she’s worried I’ll turn out weird, too. And then I got kinda upset and said some things I shouldn’t have.”
I couldn’t find the right words. How could I not take this personally? I wanted to wring her delicate little freckled neck.
“Oh, Drew,” I said.
“I told her that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, because her sister is, like, ninety-five pounds and eats nothing but carrots and cottage cheese and everyone acts like it’s totally normal. And how her dad goes through, like, six beers every single night.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow, so who is she to talk? So, yeah, that didn’t go over well and she broke up with me.” He laughed darkly. “For ‘not being supportive.’ Ha.”
I reached over to smooth his hair. I couldn’t reach it most of the time, and I found myself surprised by its softness.
He shrugged, moved his head away from my hand. “I don’t know what she saw in a loser freak like me anyway.”
At this I lunged forward for another hug. “You are not. At all. Don’t let that prissy brat make you feel that way. You’re a straight A kid and a whiz at computers and you’re funny and caring and she’s an airheaded idiot who wants life to be like Glamour magazine. Tell Molly Ringwald to go to hell.”
“Who?”
“She was this actress . . . I always thought Miranda looked . . . oh, forget it. Someday we’ll watch The Breakfast Club. I think you’d like it. And Heathers. We should definitely watch Heathers. You’re more of a Winona Ryder kind of kid anyway.”
“Who?”
I realized he was teasing me when I noticed a little tuck in the side of his cheek. I shoved him playfully, and we both laughed.
“Yeah, Mom, I know who they are. I’ve seen The Breakfast Club and I do like it.” He started singing the song from the movie. “Don’t you . . . forget about me . . .”
I sighed and smiled at him, basking in the echo of his laughter. “Don’t worry. I couldn’t possibly.”
Chapter 46
Seth put a hand lightly on my shoulder as I pushed open the door to my town house. Kitchen drawers were gaping open. My DVDs littered the floor. The television was gone. But none of that stopped me in my tracks like the muddy footprints across my carpet. The thought of someone else’s hands pawing across my items, ripping open my drawers . . . I shivered and my stomach roiled.
Seth was stroking my shoulder with his hand. I walked out from under his touch and drifted down my hall, wincing as I approached my bedroom. My closet was standing open, clothing torn down and scattered. My books lay like battlefield casualties. My jewelry box was in the center of my bed, its contents spilled around it. I lunged for it, started sifting through the contents.
“Oh, God. No. No, no, no.”
Seth settled himself carefully next to me. I could sense him trying to meet my eyes, but I couldn’t look away from what I knew to be missing.
“Oh, God. They took it.”
“What?”
“Mother’s ring.” I put my hand over my eyes. “Trish will kill me. She wanted it, but our father gave it to me. It was one of the few things rescued from the fire. He said Mom had wanted me to have it and Trish would never believe him. Now that it’s gone she’ll hate me even more.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“It won’t matter.”
It felt like a pop inside my chest. Sudden and small, the cracking of a twig. Followed by an upwelling of pressure. I was a balloon, stretched ever more thin.
My wailing and sobbing sounded bizarre in my own ears. If I wasn’t feeling the sobs clogging my throat, my hot tears burning my eyes, I wouldn’t even think it was me making this noise. I felt myself rocking, which I must have been doing under my own power but that felt alien, too.
The mattress swayed as Seth joined me on my bed, sweeping aside the remains of my cheap costume jewelry, wrapping his arms around me. He said nothing, but rocked with me, holding me, as I let this emotion consume me, wondering at what I’d become.
I startled awake to everything feeling strange and wrong, and nearly screamed.
Then the nighttime amnesia vanished, and I remembered all of it. Trish’s house, the clean-out, Seth, the break-in, Mother’s ring.
Seth was stretched next to me. He was on his back, one arm thrown up over his head. We’d lain down—or melted down, almost—as my crying receded, wordlessly curling up together, clothed, on top of the covers. We did not speak as we let exhaustion overtake us.
I couldn’t help but remember the only other time I’d seen him sleep, when he came to our dormitory looking for his recent ex-girlfriend, and I let him sleep off his drunk on the couch.
We’d come together in crisis—his breakup, my mother’s funeral, Trish’s hoard. I wondered if this
pattern would repeat itself, and how often. That when my current disaster was smoothed over—somehow it would and some sort of equilibrium would return—he would go back to his own life and his patients and having his daughter on alternate weekends. We’d be back to our postcards and annual, lighthearted calls.
It was something, I supposed. To have such a good friend that he would fly to your side in need.
I watched his face, smooth in repose, and remembered the intensity of his stare in the park as he asked me why it was so hard for him to be close. Now, I wondered, more to the point, why he wanted to be close to me. Why anyone would want to.
The memory of Seth in the park today prodded another memory, this one older, and blurry with nostalgia. It was the day after his father’s heart attack, and Rebecca had not yet arrived back to college from her trip. Seth was working in the student bookstore then, and on my way to grab a sandwich in town I’d stopped at the store to drop off a photocopied magazine article I’d found about technology improving longevity for heart attack survivors. He took his break when I got there, and we sat outside on a bench, as Ann Arbor paraded by. It was a windy day, I remember, and my hair was already a nest of snarls from my bike ride over.
He scanned the article, then folded it carefully, and tucked it into his jeans pocket. He turned to me with a wan smile, catching me in the act of spitting my hair out of my mouth. He reached up and tucked it behind my ear for me. I was reaching at the same time, and our hands brushed.
I chuckled and put my hands back in my lap, and the wind whipped my hair in front of my face again. I had to turn away from him to free myself from the tangle, to let the wind blow my hair behind me. In my turning away, something switched off that I hadn’t noticed until just then. There was a warmth I’d been feeling, in his presence, and when he’d brushed my hand.
I heard him stand up, and I stood up, too, and he waved good-bye and went back to work.
Our parting was so casual I assumed I’d imagined that feeling, simply conjured it out of desperate loneliness, considering I’d found that magazine article in the first place while studying in the library on a Saturday night, while everyone else was out drinking, dating, and having sex.
Now, here on my bed, drowsiness was creeping up on me again. I allowed myself a few sleepy moments to recall the pleasant sensation of his hand brushing mine, without actually reaching over to touch him, in the darkness of my room.
When I awoke, Seth was looking at me.
The daylight was muted, as if through fog. He had sleep creases in his bald head, which, despite it all, made me smile.
“Hi,” he said. Then more seriously, dropping the smile, “Are you OK?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
I considered. “No. But right now, yes.”
He reached out to me, and with the gentlest touch I’d ever felt, like the brush of dandelion fluff, he moved a strand of hair away from my eyes. I did not flinch or shrink back. He said, “I’m sorry this happened to you.”
“I’ll live.”
“Can I talk like a shrink for a minute?”
“If you must.”
“Don’t deny how you’re feeling. Let it happen, reckon with it, acknowledge it. Even with the mess, I can see how ordered your place was. This must feel like a significant violation.”
I rolled to my back, looking at my ugly popcorn ceiling and considering. Yes, violation would be the word for the first feeling as I crossed the threshold. Then a powerful sense of loss at the absence of Mother’s ring.
I tried to put the violation and loss aside for the practical consideration of toothpaste and a hairbrush, but the feelings trailed me like little ghosts all through my morning routine.
Seth steadied me with a hand at the small of my back as I again regarded my living room in the muted daylight. Outside the sky was a pale, unambitious gray, as if the weak and early springtime couldn’t be bothered to conjure up a genuine storm.
“It’s pathetic,” I said at last.
“What is?”
“This actually looks like a huge mess, but it’s not. Push the drawers back in, put the DVDs back into the cabinet. Clean the carpet.” I laughed bitterly. “Except for the ring, I had almost nothing of value worth stealing and not enough things to make for a genuine ransacking.”
“It doesn’t even look like you put up any pictures.”
I pointed to a Georgia O’Keeffe print over where the television used to be. “I always liked that. But it’s not very original, I know . . .”
“Why didn’t you make this space your own?”
“Don’t analyze me right now.”
“Can’t I just ask a simple question?”
I turned away from the wreckage to stare at him. “I don’t know. Can’t you?”
“Not everything I say has an agenda.”
“Everyone has an agenda, don’t they? Everything has a secret meaning, every dream means something. . . . Maybe I just like it neat, OK? Maybe I just don’t like to put holes in the walls that I’ll have to spackle over later. Maybe I don’t like snapshots and maybe I don’t have any. My work was my life and you don’t go around taking pictures at work.”
“Why are you angry at me?”
“Why are you interrogating me?”
“I’m not.”
“You’re not just asking, either.”
“I care about you. And I worry about you.”
“Well, stop. I’m the sane one, remember. I’m glad you stayed with me, glad you . . .” Instantly, the memory of Seth embracing me, of us drifting off together on my bed, filled me with queasy discomfort, in the same way as the memory of an awful mistake. “I’m glad you were there for me. I thank you. But I’m fine.”
“You shouldn’t deny—”
“Stop!” I shouted. “Leave it alone. God, I know how your wife felt.”
The atmosphere shifted. I could almost smell the air go septic. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
Seth was still, looking down at my carpet. I dared not speak; I’d said so much wrong already, so much wrong in my clumsy life.
Mute, he walked to my DVDs and began stacking them. He was neither gentle nor rough with them, nor did he look at me.
I could go to him. I could walk over and apologize, embrace him.
But the rigid set of his shoulders told me I’d done too much damage already.
I walked to the kitchen and began stacking flatware back in their spaces, letting the clicking of objects fill the silence between us.
Chapter 47
Ayana almost danced when she saw my house. She clapped her hands like a delighted little girl and then made to hug me.
I stepped back. Good for her to be happy and all, but I had a limited store of affection for bureaucrats with the power to get my children removed from my care.
“Jack slept in his room last night, too,” I said. I saw Ayana start to speak, and I put one hand over my heart, the other in the air. “Hand to God. On my mother’s soul.”
She nodded, and I knew she’d ask Jack anyway. She had her job to do, and I’d already lied to her last time.
“OK, so that’s the good news,” I told her. “But it’s not all good.”
I beckoned Ayana to follow me, and I showed her the Room.
“Oh, my,” she said. “Yes, I remember this from the first day. Some of the items look like they’ve been disturbed.
“You have a very good memory. I had a hard time yesterday when some of my family moved some things in here. Roughly. I got very upset and I ran off for a bit. But there were adults here to take care of the children, and I came back. You need to know that.”
She was writing. I hated it when she wrote. “Thank you for telling me, Mrs. Dietrich,” she said.
I sighed. “You can call me Trish,” I allowed, tiring of hearing Ron’s
mother’s name. “We’re going to do this room. But later.” I looked her hard in the eye. “It took years to get this way. And there’s pain buried in there. I can’t just grab it all out of here at once.”
“No one expects perfection, Mrs. . . . Trish. We just want progress.”
“So you’ve said.”
“Do you mind telling me what kind of pain?”
“Yes, I mind.”
“I hope you will discuss this with your psychologist.”
I snorted.
“You’ll need to be forthcoming and cooperative. I know it’s unpleasant, difficult work, but it’s necessary.”
“Why is it necessary for me to be mentally dissected? It’s not good enough for you that I cleaned all this shit up?”
“What if it all came back? After all this effort, what if it happened again?”
I leaned against the wall, and in my mind I watched a movie of my mother’s home filling up on fast-forward, even faster than before the Florida trip.
That was different, I tried to tell myself, knowing it wasn’t so different as soon as my brain formed the thought.
I sighed. “Everyone’s pushing me so hard all the time. I’m so tired.”
“I know you are,” she said, reaching out to touch my elbow. Her hand felt absurdly light and thin, like a bird wing. “That’s why I want you to have some support.”
I heard her drawl slip in on the word support and wondered where she came from, what she herself had left behind. She was trying to hide it with her professionalism and her trench coat and messenger bag, I knew. But it would sneak out now and then, despite her best efforts.
“Where are you from, Ayana, if I may ask?”
“Detroit,” she said.
“Where in Detroit?” I asked. Some suburban types would say Detroit when they meant Farmington Hills.
She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Detroit,” she answered again.
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