NOW
Summer in Winchester is a bitch.
This time last year, I was taking calculus at summer school and dealing with the kind of news that rocks the foundation of your life. But at least it was air-conditioned.
Sweat makes a lazy trail down the back of my neck as I feed tennis balls over the net and try to avoid getting whacked by a bunch of hyper nine-year-olds. Maybe the time would pass faster if I hadn’t emptied my water bottle within the first half-hour of lessons. Or maybe the time would pass faster if I got paid for what I was doing.
There are a lot of reasons why I’m probably not the ideal teacher, but when the tennis club was down an instructor last year, I volunteered to help out, and I don’t intend to break my promise.
“Looking good, Madison!” I call out to the newest girl in my group, a toothy kid dressed in all-pink everything.
“Nice! Make sure you bring your racket back all the way, Lewis,” I tell the next kid.
I reach into my cart and toss another ball over the net. It comes whooshing back with interest, and I don’t have enough time to jump out of the way before it pelts my right knee.
“Oof. You okay, Jessi?” Derek winces in sympathy from the ad side of the court, where he is also feeding balls to a lineup of kids.
“Yeah. I’m good.” I rub at my knee, trying to erase the pain.
Derek walks over and holds a tennis ball to his mouth to hide what he’s saying. “That kid’s got a forehand. If only he’d tone it down a little and occasionally try to get it in the court.”
“No kidding,” I agree.
Derek is in his forties, a former college player with a massive serve. He started at Tennis Win only a couple of months ago, but he’s already a far more dedicated head coach than the string of coaches the club has hired in the last year, since it’s been under new management. If he didn’t keep a running commentary throughout the day, he wouldn’t be half bad. I miss the husband-wife duo who taught us when Ro and I were kids, but they retired and moved to Florida two years ago.
I manage not to get hit again for the rest of the morning lessons. After cleaning up the courts, Derek and I head back to the club building. My knee is throbbing at this point, so I grab an ice pack from the freezer in the kitchen and fall into a chair in the mercifully air-conditioned lounge room.
As soon as I sit, I am hit with all the reasons I tend to avoid the lounge room like the plague. A grinning fifteen-year-old Rowan stares at me from one of the portraits in Tennis Win’s Hall of Fame. He sports an identical smile in three other pictures that are interspersed among the photographs of past “Winchester stars.” There’s even one of both of us at a tournament we won when we were about ten and playing mixed doubles together, beaming at the camera as if it’s the best day of our lives.
A lump forms in my throat, and I pack up my stuff and quickly leave the lounge, dumping the ice pack in the freezer on the way out. I’m in the parking lot of the tennis club, back out in the scorching sun, when my phone vibrates with a text.
Come to the lake with me and Brett this afternoon! It’s from Willow Hastings, whose dad owns the tennis club. She usually hangs around Tennis Win on Saturday mornings, watching lessons, and I feel relieved that I missed her today. I’m not in the mood for her cheeriness and relentless optimism. Frankly, it’s a miracle that we’re friends—for me, anyway. Because of everything that happened last year, I was basically friendless my senior year, until Willow came to Winchester. Thanks to the brutal luck of having to move just before the last semester of her senior year, Willow and I were the only two untethered planets in the Winchester High galaxy, and we soon found our way into each other’s orbits. I doubt we would be friends if she’d grown up here like everyone else.
I text and walk at the same time.
Can’t. I have to work. I add a sad face emoji, as if this pains me greatly.
With the grandpa you babysit?? she writes back.
I smile, but don’t dignify her text with a response.
I climb into the car my parents bought me at the start of the year.
All Saints Assisted Living is only a couple of miles away from the tennis club, and I arrive fifteen minutes before my shift starts at one. I make my way inside anyway, swiping my badge over the door and going up the elevator and down the hallway to Ernie’s room.
When I knock, he calls for me to come in. I open the door and step into the kitchen of his small apartment, the lights on even though it’s the middle of the afternoon.
“Hey, Ernie. Are you decent?”
“Enough,” he retorts, his usual answer, and I smile.
I find him in the living room, sitting in front of the TV, watching a curling match with no volume.
“How are you doing?” I plop down on the couch next to his beloved rocking chair.
“Better than the alternative,” he says.
“Which is what?” I ask, knowing I’m walking right into the trap of a carefully orchestrated joke. I know he spends all of the days before I come thinking of jokes he can try out on me, so I always play along.
“Six feet under, like my brother Gareth Richard Solomon IV, the unlucky son of a bitch.”
“Ernie!” I say in mock horror. “Don’t make me call your mother.”
“Why not? I haven’t been to a good seance in some years.”
I laugh. “I can’t, when you’re like this,” I say, even though he is always like this and that’s what keeps me coming back. That, and the fact that I get paid for it, which honestly feels like a con, since most times he is easily the best part of my week. I was nervous to apply when I first saw the ad Ernie’s family posted online late last year, looking for someone to keep him company a few times a week. I didn’t have a lot of experience with older people. We live far from Dad’s parents, and I’ve never even met Mom’s. Thankfully, it has turned out to be the perfect job for me. I literally get to sit and exchange barbs with the funniest old man I’ve ever met, and I make money from it.
“Want to go for a walk?” I ask while I tidy up his small table.
Ernie scoffs. “I didn’t do all that exercise when I was young just to get old and do even more. When do I reap the benefits of what I sowed?”
“The fresh air will be good for you,” I insist.
He shakes his head.
“Put on some music,” he says, “and then I want to ask you something.”
I’ve been here enough times that I can hook up my phone to the wireless speaker Ernie’s kids bought him last Christmas, and within seconds Ella Fitzgerald’s voice comes spilling out into the room.
I let myself listen to the old jazz classics only when I’m with Ernie. First, because he’s old enough to appreciate them. Second, because with him as my audience, I can usually manage to keep my tears back.
Today the ache in my chest is dull but bearable.
“What’s up?” I ask when I’m back on the couch.
“I’m always wondering, but I’ve never asked,” he says. “What’s a girl like you doing hanging around all afternoon, three days a week, with an old fart like me?”
“First of all, you’re not—”
“Save it. I know what I am. A goddamned piece of flatulence,” Ernie insists. “Well?”
“Well, what?” I ask.
He is quiet a minute, and then he speaks, his eyes serious, “Why do I get the feeling that I’m replacing something for you?”
I swallow hard.
“You’re not replacing anything,” I say when I manage to speak. But the truth is, we both know he’s right. He’s replacing the family I thought I’d never lose, just the way Willow is replacing the friends I thought I’d always have.
“Hmph,” he says, clearly dissatisfied with my answer, but we go back to listening to the music and not speaking.
As I’m leaving Ernie’s place just after three, my phone vibrates in my pocket and I answer it.
“Hi, honey!” The cheeriness in my mom’s voice is even more unexpected than th
e call itself. It really shouldn’t surprise me, because that’s a thing my mom does these days. Call me.
“Just wondering when you’re coming home,” she says.
“I’m just leaving All Saints. I had to work, remember?” I probably should have texted to remind her, but I’m still not used to checking in with anyone about where I am.
“Are you sure you’re not working too hard, Jessi? Two jobs and volunteering at the club?”
“I’m fine, Mom,” I say.
“All right.” There’s a short, awkward silence; then she sighs. “Well, I just wanted to see where you were. Drive safe, okay?”
I tell her I will and hang up.
My mother has changed so much this past year that I still have trouble believing that this new version of her, Mom 2.0, is here to stay. The memories of our quiet house and the dark of my parents’ bedroom gives me whiplash, and it’s easier to focus on my conversation with Ernie than to remember how things used to be.
So I go back to what Ernie said about the people he’s replacing, and soon I’m in a sinkhole made of the past. I’m drowning in thoughts of Mel and Ro and Luke, and even Sydney.
I’m usually good about not acting on my impulses, but on my drive home, I break.
I let myself do the thing I rarely ever do.
I drive by the Cohen house on the far east side of town. Slow down to get a good look at the car I don’t recognize and let myself wonder, for just a minute, what my life would be like if last summer never happened.
2
THEN
For the whole week after we found out she was sick, I could hardly look at Mel without bursting into tears. Not quiet, dainty ones either, but loud, jerky hiccups. Sometimes I swore I could feel Ro’s eyes on me, and I thought about what he’d said that night.
Imagine if this was your mom.
Did he feel as if I were hijacking Mel, binding myself to their family, to their pain, when it wasn’t mine?
And how could he possibly think that? That it wasn’t mine, too?
I’d grown up following the same rules Ro and Luke did, hearing the same bedtime stories, being hugged and chastised and loved the same way they were. I had more memories of Mel tucking me in than I did of my mother doing so. In all the ways that mattered, Mel was family to me.
How did Ro not see that?
Things had been weird with me and him ever since that night at his house. He still wouldn’t tell me the real reason he’d asked me to leave, and I still hated him a little for it. Or I tried to hate him, anyway. Mostly, I was just sad. Ro and I didn’t keep secrets from each other. We sometimes fought, but we never purposely hurt each other. It made me wonder if something had changed in our friendship, if somehow we were drifting apart.
On Saturday, just a couple of days after Mel’s news, Ro and I were sitting in Rosas, the bakery Mel owned, stuffing our faces with red velvet cupcakes. Rosas is Tagalog for “rose,” but people always assumed it was Rosa’s, and that Mel was Rosa.
Now, temporarily abandoned in front of me, was my calc textbook and a pile of papers documenting my failed attempts to figure out derivatives. I’d jumped at Rowan’s offer to help me, glad we could spend some time together, but his “help” was turning out to be of no use. He was nearly as bad as I was at calculus.
I could hear Mel’s voice in the back as she was training the lady who would be managing the store over the next few months while Mel started treatment.
“I love her accent,” I whispered to Rowan, who was scrolling through his phone, probably watching tennis highlights, as Wimbledon was on at this time of year.
When he didn’t answer, I tapped his foot under the table and repeated what I’d said. The woman, Beverley, had this prim British accent that mixed unexpectedly with a Midwestern drawl on certain words. I’d heard her telling Mel that she was from Brighton but had lived in Ohio for more than fifteen years. As a rule, Winchester didn’t get a lot of new blood, and we always got excited when it did.
“Hmm,” Rowan said absently.
I stood and walked around to his side of the table. I leaned down, pretending to get a napkin, when what I really wanted was to see what held his attention so tightly. If he was looking at anything gross, I was going to round kick him.
I stiffened when I saw the logo of the hospital where Mel’s treatment was supposed to start the next Monday.
Rowan finally noticed me, and he quickly turned off his phone screen, saying, “Do you mind?” That his impulse was to shut me out stung. It was like the night Mel had been diagnosed all over again.
“Why did you make me leave?” I asked, still leaning over him. “That night, why did you want me to go?”
“I already told you,” he muttered. “It was a family thing.”
“Naomi was there.”
“She’s Mom’s friend. Mom clearly felt comfortable enough to share the news in front of her.”
The implication was that I had been at Mel’s house as Ro’s friend and had no other reason to be there that night. I blanched. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
He shrugged.
I glanced into the back of the bakery, where I could make out a sliver of Mel’s green shirt, and wondered if there was any truth to what he was implying.
Could Mel have wanted me to go that night?
Why wouldn’t she have told me that herself?
Until that night, I’d felt so confident in my place with the Cohens. But now, thanks to Rowan, I was starting to question every assumption I’d ever made.
Like, how did I know Mel saw me the way I thought she did? Had she ever actually said I was the daughter she’d never had?
A voice in my head told me she didn’t have to say it. She had always been super affectionate with me, she’d always included me in her family’s plans, right from that day, years ago, when seven-year-old me was left standing outside Tennis Win because my dad was late picking me up again.
Maybe it’s because she felt sorry for you. That wasn’t much of a stretch. I was the girl with the absent mother, the girl whose tennis whites had been dyed purple by a dad who didn’t know the first thing about doing laundry. Pity was the most logical explanation for the way I’d been embraced by the Cohens all those years ago, but was it the truth?
I turned on Rowan.
“You’re such an asshole. You know that?”
“Whatever,” Rowan said, standing. “I have to get to practice. You need a ride or what?”
“I’ll walk, but thanks.”
He rolled his eyes. “Let’s go.”
“I said, I’ll walk but thanks.”
“Fine,” he said, and stalked off. He’d made it all the way to the door before he stopped again. We both knew my house was all the way across town and that walking would take a good hour and a half. “Are you for real right now?” he asked, raising his hands in exasperation.
I ignored him and sat down at our table, my back to him. I heard the door slam shut a few seconds later.
“What was that?” Mel asked, appearing again behind the counter.
“Just Ro, being a jackass. Can you give me a ride home when you’re done? I mean, if that’s okay.”
Mel was wiping the counter now, but she looked up at me with a frown. “Of course it’s okay. Why would you think it wasn’t?”
Ro’s acting like he’s sick of me, I wanted to say, but I didn’t want to throw him under the bus. So I kept my mouth shut and simply shrugged.
“I’m giving you a ride home,” Mel said, letting me know there were no ands or buts about it. When I nodded, she turned and disappeared into the kitchen.
It was intensely inconvenient, being newly seventeen and still not having a car. Ro had managed to land a cheap secondhand Ford, even though money was much more of an issue for the Cohens than it was for my parents. Correction: money was much more of an issue for Mel and the boys. Dr. Cohen and the ER nurse he’d left Mel for definitely had no money issues, going by the lavish gifts Luke and Ro normally got for birt
hdays and Christmases.
Even though I’d gotten my license last year, my father still felt I wasn’t “ready” to have my own car. I think, in his mind, my having a car meant one more thing he had to worry about. He already had Mom and EyeCon, the eye clinic my parents owned. The way I saw it, it was one less thing he had to worry about, because I would no longer be bumming rides off my friends or taking buses or walking, but as far as Dad was concerned, a car meant ample opportunity for accidents and mischief, and I had yet to convince him otherwise.
Over the next few weeks I continued to ask Rowan about that night. He would probably have used the word harass, but I wouldn’t let it go. He had done this to me—making me question how the Cohens really saw me after all these years. I just couldn’t accept that any of what he’d said was true. Mel did not seem to act, in any way, like I was the pest Ro had made me feel I was. She was never short with me, never distant or annoyed or anything less than what she’d always been: kind.
I was used to feeling unsteady in other ways. For my whole life, my mother had been the biggest question mark in my world. I used to spend hours staring at the photographs lining the living room walls, pictures from when my parents were newlyweds, traveling through South Africa and France and the UK. I’d park in front of those framed photos, asking the pictures questions they couldn’t answer. Why the two people in them looked like strangers. Why my mother seemed happy and vibrant and round-faced in those early pictures, but haunted and gaunt and faraway in all the pictures taken after I was born. I’d ask the old Polaroids they took in grad school when that ever-present crease between Dad’s brows first appeared and what caused it—and why, if he turned away from looking at my mother for even a second now, it seemed she would break.
I was used to questioning so many things about my life, and now, in addition to the other things I could never figure out, I had questions about my place with the Cohens.
THEN
I went from spending every night at the Cohen house to every second or third night, even though, while Mel was undergoing treatment, I kind of wanted to be there all the time. I wanted to know when she was having a bad day. I wanted to be the one to watch scary movies with her and paint her toenails when she wanted to forget about being sick. I wanted her to know how much I cared.
Some Other Now Page 2