Even though I met him only late last year, he’s one of the few people I spend any time with these days and the thought that he might have had enough of me stings.
Ernie snorts at my question. “No, but we both save face if you stop coming before you get sick of me.”
I touch his arm, relieved. “I’m not going to get sick of you.”
“Oh, please,” he says. “My Mary did sixty-some years with me, so they made her a saint.”
“I think that was a different Mary.”
“That’s not what I heard,” he says with a chuckle. His face grows more serious now. “Look, my kids have their lives on the East Coast. I raised them to be independent—they’re only doing what I taught them to. Same with the grandkids. Great-grandkids . . . well, one of them is named Eustace, the other Titus, so they have enough problems of their own. Sure, sometimes it gets lonely, but it was six years after my Mary left me before they moved me here, and I managed fine. I will manage fine.”
“I know you will, Ernie, but I like coming to see you.”
He stares at me skeptically for a few minutes and sighs. “Well, I suppose they pay you good to say that.”
“You’re so frustrating, you know that?” I tell him, and with his level of delight, you’d think I just complimented him.
“So I suppose you’re just going to keep on coming despite my wishes?”
“I am,” I say defiantly. Maybe I don’t deserve it, but being around Ernie makes me happy. It also makes me feel like I’m doing some good in the world, which makes me at least a little bit different from who I was last year.
He sighs again. “Well, all right. Next time, bring a bag of those salty chips if you’re coming anyway.”
“Done,” I say.
“And a tub of yogurt, but real. None of that low-fat nonsense.”
“Got it.”
“And a pack of Marlboros and a lighter.”
“Not happening.”
“Ah, well. Had to try.”
At the end of our two hours, Ernie pats my hand and says, “You’re a good girl, Jessi.”
Even though I work hard every day for this to be true, the voice in my head is still louder. And it’s still right, even though I hate it.
I’m not good.
A good person wouldn’t do the things I’ve done.
A good person would have told Mel the truth when I saw her yesterday and would certainly not go along with some plan to keep lying to her, no matter who suggested it.
I find myself veering off course and driving in the direction of the far east, through neighborhoods as familiar as the back of my own hands. When I’m in front of the Cohen house, I take a breath to steady myself and run through what I plan to say to Luke.
He’s going to be disappointed, maybe even angry, but he’s the one who started this lie. I don’t have to go along with it. No matter how happy it would make Mel, I can’t continue to lie to her.
I ring the doorbell and find myself listening for the pitter-patter of dog feet before I remember that Sydney is gone. The realization every time feels like a bruise that I keep pressing on.
When the doorbell swings open, Luke is still in his Camp MORE T-shirt and jeans, half a carrot in his hand.
“Hey.” He looks surprised to see me.
“Luke, who is it?” I hear Mel call from somewhere close by, and my eyes widen.
I give two vigorous shakes of my head and put my fingers to my lips.
“Jessi,” he calls to her, ignoring my wild gesticulation.
“Is she staying for dinner?” Mel calls.
“I’ll ask her,” he says, looking right at me.
“We need to talk,” I whisper.
He glances over his shoulder, shuts the front door, but stays on the porch. He’s standing in the exact spot where I kissed him almost a year ago, and the thought feels like a stab in my chest.
“I changed my mind,” I tell him now.
“About?” he asks.
“Us,” I say.
He gives me an odd look. “Us?”
Luke has never been accused of being slow, so I suspect he is dragging this out for my benefit.
“You know—what you told Mel,” I whisper now, not sure how to say the words out loud. Us pretending to be together.
“I can’t do it,” I say. “First of all, she’s never going to buy it. I don’t know what you’re thinking. Second, it’s just wrong, and it’s a horrible thing to do.”
“What’s so horrible about it?” Luke asks, which is the last thing I’m expecting him to say.
“It’s a lie,” I say, surprised that this is not obvious to him.
“I don’t see how it hurts anyone.”
“We would have to hang out all the time,” I blurt out, and his eyes narrow.
“Is that what’s bothering you? Having to be around me?”
“No. I mean, obviously, it’s weird, but . . .” My voice trails off.
“She has weeks, Jessi. If that.” His eyes get this hard look. “I thought that would mean something to you—that you, of all people, would understand. But I guess I was wrong about you.”
The word again hangs in the air, but neither of us says it.
I swallow hard. “I want her to be happy, but—”
“But not at the cost of your own comfort? Got it.” He starts toward the door, then turns back. “Do you think that I want to do this? You think pretending to be anything with you is my idea of a good time?”
I open my mouth to speak, then shut it again.
“You think I like hearing all the fucking time about you, and how you were the daughter she never had—what did Ro call it, the chosen one—and how I’m the reason you’re gone?”
It’s the first time either of us has brought up Rowan, and I feel like I’m going to throw up.
I’m swiping at the tear on my cheek before I even register that I’m crying. “I miss Mel, too,” I say, because it’s true, and it’s easier than talking about his brother.
“She’s here,” he says, pointing toward the house. “She’s waiting to hear if you’re staying for dinner. If that’s what you want.”
Against my better judgment, I’m nodding my head and wiping my eyes with my arm.
That’s what I want.
For everything to go back to the way it was.
More than anything in this world, that’s what I want.
“Do I look like crap?” I ask, fanning my wet face with my hands. “Don’t answer that,” I say quickly, because this isn’t the Luke Cohen from my childhood, and he’s certainly not the Luke Cohen from last summer. This Luke, I know without knowing how, is no longer worried about trying to protect me. This Luke doesn’t care about hurting me.
He goes in without saying a word, and I follow.
NOW
Dinner is different. It is sitting in the living room on the loveseat while Mel is sitting out on the sofa, swimming in a sea of blankets. Her food is half the size of mine and much less than Luke’s.
It is catching up but not talking about anything that matters, like we’re navigating a giant hole in the ground without acknowledging it.
It feels so wrong—the thought of Rowan being a hole, something to navigate around.
I sit on the edge of my seat, watching Mel slurp down her soup, and I try to act like I’m not staring.
It is Luke’s arm stretched out behind me on the couch, both of us trying to act normal but ready to jump up at a moment’s notice to adjust Mel’s blankets or take her bowl away or hand her water.
“Nay is coming over later tonight,” Mel tells us. “She’s back to teaching full-time in the fall, so she’s spending lots of time preparing for that. Oh, and did I tell you she got married?”
“Naomi got married?” I repeat. I’m distracted by the sallow flesh of Mel’s shoulders that is exposed by the oversize shirt she is wearing, but I’m trying not to let on. The last thing I want is to embarrass her or to make her feel like the state of her body has change
d her for me.
Mel laughs. “I’m going to tell her you sounded that surprised. She never had trouble landing a man, you know.”
“She will tell her, too,” Luke tells me. “They still gossip like hens.” Even though he’s sitting right beside me, our bodies inches apart, it’s jarring every time he talks to me. If not for Mel’s presence, we would have absolutely nothing to say to each other.
“Hurtful, Luke,” Mel says with a shake of her head.
“It’s not that,” I amend. “Like, it’s not that I ever thought she couldn’t find a man or anything, but I guess I just kind of figured she . . . didn’t want to?”
“I’m taking this all back to Nay,” she says.
“For years, we all used to think—” I start and then stop. Luke looks up from cutting his meat to look at me, and Mel looks too. I have no choice but to go on. “We, um, thought that maybe there was something going on with you and her.”
Mel throws her head back, and her laugh is bigger than her whole body. “Me and Naomi? Seriously?”
“We literally used to sit around, and I’d ask, do you think Mel and Naomi have ever kissed, and would you be mad if they had? And we all decided we wouldn’t.” I feel myself walking on a literal land mine, but stopping will set off the explosion.
“Who’s we?” Mel asks.
“All of us,” I say, not looking at either of them.
Everything is quiet, except for the sound of Luke chewing, and then Mel says, “Well, as nice as it is that it wouldn’t have bothered you, we’ve always been just friends. Romance is great and all, but friendship is every bit as miraculous and special.” Another beat passes, and as I’m reaching for my water, she adds, “Advice brought to you by a forty-seven-year-old who hasn’t been laid since creation.”
“Jesus, Mom,” Luke groans, and I spit out my water, laughing.
“Don’t worry. Nothing sounds less appealing right now,” she says.
“Mom.”
“What?” Mel says. “If I can’t tell it like it is at this point in my life, I never will.”
Luke and I must have matching somber expressions, because Mel says, “Oh, come on! We can laugh about it. The Big Bad can have everything else, but not my laughter.”
I give Mel a close-lipped smile, my heart feeling heavy.
She sighs and slowly lowers her body back down from its sitting position.
“Tired?” Luke asks, and she nods.
He stands up, ready to take her back to her room, but she waves him off.
“No, I’m fine. Keep hanging out. Don’t let me ruin the fun.”
Luke and I look at each other.
“Actually, I probably need to get going,” I say, standing.
“So soon?” Mel’s eyes are closed, and she winces as if she’s in pain. “It feels like you just got here.”
“I have to get some stuff done before camp tomorrow.”
“You two are sneaky as hell,” Mel says now, opening one eye and pointing at both of us. “Luke tells me he’s working at the community center camp, and then this afternoon, he’s like, “So when I saw Jessi . . .’ ”
I steal a look in his direction, but he’s just watching his mother with a passive expression.
“I said, ‘You saw Jessi?’ He goes, ‘She works there too.’ As if you didn’t plan it out like that so you could work together.”
“Yeah, uh, sorry,” I say lamely when Luke says nothing. “I’m going to go now, Mel,” I say, leaning down to hug her. When I was little, I used to squeeze her as if she were oxygen and I was running out of air, but now I’m tentative and cautious, not wanting to hurt her.
“Bye Jessi-girl,” she says.
“I’ll walk you out,” Luke says as I straighten. We head out of the house in silence, and once we’re on the porch again, the air feels weighted.
“So we should probably figure out schedules,” he says now. “Like, so we’re seeing each other as often as . . . people would.”
“Oh,” I say. “Okay.”
I realize we’re doing this. We’re really going to pretend to be together to make Mel happy.
Luke was right, though; it’s the least I can do.
He leans back against the side of the house. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”
“Helping out at the club.” I’m hoping I don’t have to specify which club, but he knows.
“The night after that?”
“Thursday I’m working at All Saints. And Saturday afternoons, too.”
He frowns. “Why do you work so much?”
He asks, but we both know he doesn’t care what my answer is, so I don’t offer one.
“How’s Friday night then?” he asks. “We can meet up at eight, act like we did dinner, and then come back here to see her.”
I nod. “That works.”
“Okay,” he says, straightening.
“Well, good night,” I say, then turn and walk back to my car. I feel Luke’s gaze on me the whole time as I get in, start the car, and pull out onto the road, and it makes my stomach flutter. I’m guessing he waits out there long enough for Mel to think he walked me out, kissed me good night, and waited until I drove home.
Seeing Mel, along with all the pretending tonight, has taken its toll on me, and I feel heavy and sad as I enter my house. The lights are on in the living room, and I’m surprised to see Mom in there, working on her laptop.
“Sweetheart!” she says brightly when she sees me. “How was your day?”
“Good,” I say.
“Good?” she repeats skeptically, and I’m surprised that she can see right through me. After all the years of living together but existing in separate universes, I’m used to my mother knowing exactly nothing about me. It catches me off-guard to realize that this new version of her is starting to know me well enough to read me, to recognize my moods. It makes me feel strangely grateful, and I try not to think about it going away again.
Mom looks pleased when I come and sit on the couch beside her.
“Not so good,” I admit. “I had dinner with Mel today—”
“And?” she prompts.
I tell my mother how weak Mel looked, how guilty I feel for missing so much of the end of her life. My parents think I just drifted away from the other Cohens after Rowan died, and I don’t ever intend to tell them otherwise. I also don’t mention the added guilt I feel about going along with Luke’s plan to lie to his mother. I doubt Mom would approve of us faking a relationship just to make Mel happy.
“No matter how much time you lost the past year, the important thing is that you’re back now,” Mom says, taking my hand. “You know, I reached out to my parents a while ago, when I started therapy.”
“Did they respond?” I ask.
She looks sad when she shakes her head. “I didn’t expect them to, to be honest,” she says. “We left things in a pretty ugly place. But I remember thinking when I sent that email that I no longer care what happened, or how long it’s been, or how much they hurt me with their absence. I just wanted to try again with them. I wanted them to see me now, to know the person I’ve become. To know my beautiful daughter.” She brushes her hand over my cheek. “And I’m sure that’s how Mel felt. When you miss someone enough, it doesn’t matter how much time has passed.”
I swallow. “What ever happened between you and your parents?” When I was really little, I used to think my mom was an orphan. I even invented a story in my head that that was why she was so sad all the time. Then I got older and realized that her parents were alive and that her unhappiness stemmed from something deeper.
“Your father and I never told you?” she asks.
When would you have? I think, but just shake my head.
“They didn’t approve of him,” she says.
“Of Dad?” I ask, thinking of my put-together father with his warm smile. I think of the way he looks at Mom, the way his eyes light up when she’s in the room, the way he’s stood by her all these years, and I don’t get it.
It takes a few moments for her words to sink in, and then I balk. “Seriously? What century are they from?”
Mom shakes her head. “It’s ridiculous. It was then, and it is now,” she says. “But it’s why they never supported our marriage. They were willing to lose me before opening up their family to him. I had hoped that things might have changed over the last eighteen years, but apparently not.
“Anyway,” she continues. “I won’t ever forget the way they treated him, the way they treated us, but I was ready to start a new leaf, if they were willing—if they could accept that they’d been wrong.”
Her eyes are watering now, and I reach over and squeeze her hand.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that even when you’re wrong—especially when you’re wrong—lots of times, it’s not too late to do better. And instead of beating yourself up about not being there for Melanie, you should be glad it’s not too late.”
When we finish talking and head up the stairs, Mom’s words continue to replay in my mind. I can’t believe my grandparents are racist jerks, that that’s the reason I’ve never known them. It breaks my heart for my father, knowing how much he loves Mom, how good a person he is, yet all they could see was the color of his skin.
I think about Mom’s other words, too, about focusing on the fact that I still have time left with Mel, that it’s not too late.
I decide right then that I’m going to take advantage of every moment I have left with her.
Still, I think about Luke’s coldness since he’s been back, and I’m pretty sure Mom was wrong about one thing: sometimes it is too late. It is definitely too late for me and Luke.
7
THEN
I didn’t think Luke and I could have been any clearer about where we stood.
I’d kissed him, he’d pushed me away, and I’d sprinted down the driveway and jumped into Mel’s car as quickly as I could.
So why did he keep texting?
He texted me more during those two weeks than he had throughout all the time we’d known each other.
Some Other Now Page 10