Safe with Me: A Novel
Page 10
“I just want to be tutored at home again, but my dad says no way and my mom won’t fight him on it.” Maddie glances toward the kitchen, where her mother went, then looks back at Hannah, suddenly looking worried. “Don’t tell her I told you that, though, okay?”
Hannah smiles and takes another snip at Maddie’s fine hair. “Okay.”
“Thanks,” Maddie says, obviously relieved. She watches Hannah work, and Olivia returns with their waters. Without saying a word, she hands a bottle to Maddie, along with a few pills from her purse. Maddie sighs, but takes the medicine.
“Do you mind if I ask why you were out of school so long?” Hannah says, checking to make sure her cuts are even on both sides of Maddie’s head.
Olivia looks at Maddie, waiting for her to be the one to decide if she’ll answer the question. “I have immunosuppressant hepatitis,” she says, then screws up her face. “Had, I guess. I got a liver transplant last year, so I’m better. But I still have to take a bunch of stupid medicine, and now the kids at school all know and they basically think I’m a freak.”
No. Hannah’s breath seizes in her lungs. Her fingers lose hold of her scissors, and they clatter to the floor. It couldn’t be.
“Honey, I’m sure they don’t think that.” Olivia reaches out and squeezes her daughter’s hand, and Hannah squats down to pick up her scissors, taking a moment for a couple of deep, controlled breaths. Is it possible this is the girl Zoe mentioned? The timing is right—a year ago. Is Emily’s liver the reason Maddie is sitting in front of me right now?
She’s often thought about the lives Emily saved—the person who can see because of her corneas; her daughter’s heart beating in another child’s chest. It was the only part of losing Emily that was bearable, knowing that other families were able to avoid the kind of debilitating grief Hannah now endured. Over the last year, through Zoe, the transplant coordinator, she’s received notes from many of the parents of the recipients of Emily’s organs, but Hannah hasn’t been able to bring herself to read them. Like going through her daughter’s things, she isn’t sure she would survive it.
Now, her pulse thuds wildly inside her neck, flooding upward into her head, making it almost impossible to hear what Maddie says next.
“That boy called me Frankenstein, okay, Mom? I told you it would be like this. I just want to stay home.” She lifts her chin and looks away from the mirror again. Her bottom lip trembles, and she bites it.
Olivia sighs, then looks at Hannah, who has managed to straighten herself behind the chair. “Do you have children? Do they give you a hard time, too?”
Hannah’s throat closes and her mouth goes dry. What can I say? Should she avoid the question? Tell the truth? She coughs, fluffing Maddie’s hair to stall a moment. Finally, she looks at Olivia. “My daughter died.” She says the words quietly, but inside her head, they bounce around like an echo. And then, she can’t help it. Her eyes grow blurry and a single tear slips down her cheek. It’s the first time she has made the statement out loud to a stranger.
Olivia’s hand flies to her mouth, and Maddie freezes in her seat. “Oh god,” Olivia says, dropping her arm back to her side. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Hannah shrugs, a minute gesture, then wipes the tear away. “No need to be sorry. It’s a natural question. I just don’t talk about it much.” Her voice shakes, and she grinds her molars together to keep from completely breaking down.
Olivia stands unexpectedly, and the next thing Hannah knows, she is being hugged. She immediately tenses, unused to spontaneous affection from strangers, but then slowly relaxes into the warmth of Olivia’s embrace. “We came so close to losing Maddie,” Olivia murmurs. “I can only imagine . . .” She pulls back and searches Hannah’s face with clear, practically amber eyes. “How old was she?”
“Five,” Hannah whispers. The lie pops out of her mouth, and she doesn’t understand why. It isn’t illegal for organ donors and recipients to know each other’s identities, but there is a protocol they are supposed to follow in order to contact each other, and Hannah doesn’t know if she’d be breaking some kind of official rule by voicing her suspicions. It’s entirely possible that Maddie didn’t get Emily’s liver—that Hannah is imagining connections that aren’t there. But then again, what are the odds? And maybe more important, how can she find out for sure?
Olivia
The instant Maddie was born, Olivia didn’t think she would ever be unhappy again. How could she, with this beautiful baby girl in her arms? Maddie was a sweet, smiley infant with huge, round eyes and a cap of dark hair. In the hospital, the first time James held her, Olivia saw something in him soften. His shoulders visibly relaxed, his hard edges went blurry. “My angel,” he cooed. “My little butternut squash.”
“Butternut squash?” Olivia repeated with a tender smile. She shifted beneath the covers. The labor had been a long one; she felt like she’d been torn in two. “You’re comparing our child to a gourd?”
James chuckled. “I have no idea where that came from,” he said, unable to take his eyes off Maddie. “She’s ruined me.” He put the tip of his index finger in Maddie’s tiny starfish hand and she stared up at him, blinking and seemingly enraptured. Finally looking up at Olivia, his eyes were shiny. “Thank you,” he said, and his voice wavered. The first year of marriage is the hardest, she told herself. Now that Maddie is here, we’ll settle into becoming a family.
Once they brought Maddie home, though, James seemed to harden again. He focused as he always had, completely on work, leaving the house at six a.m., returning at the very earliest twelve hours later. Olivia often suspected that if success were a drug, James would have chopped it up and snorted it. He’d worked so hard to build his company—taking on three jobs in college so he could pay his own way. In his senior year, just before graduating, he was accepted for an internship at an investment firm, where he was mentored by William Stern, chairman and CEO of Stern Global—one of the most respected money-management companies in the world. “William taught me everything I know,” James once told her. “His first rule was be ruthless. He was in business to make money, not friends.”
James took that philosophy to heart when at twenty-nine, he decided to launch his own firm, taking all of his clients from Stern Global with him. And later, even with a baby at home, he was obsessed with every deal, every stock bought or sold, doing whatever it took to keep the money pouring in. Olivia told herself that he needed to work this hard to prove his father had been wrong—that James wasn’t worthless. She tried to understand why being at the office was more important than being home, but with a new baby, it was hard to not beg him to cut back. Before Maddie was born, Olivia had asked him to let go of the housekeeper like he had the chef, reasoning that since she wasn’t working, she was more than capable of taking care of their home without hired help. And for a little while, she did. But now that Olivia was alone with Maddie most of the day, nursing, changing diapers, trying to sleep when her baby slept, she knew the house wasn’t as clean as James liked it and the meals she prepared weren’t up to her own standards. She considered asking him to hire a baby nurse, but it felt so overindulgent she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Other women do this on their own every day, she told herself. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to afford help. And the truth was, Olivia didn’t want hired help—she wanted her husband’s.
“I’m so tired I can’t see straight,” Olivia told her mother during the phone call they shared each morning. Olivia could hear the noisy jangle of the television in the background; both her mother and her nurse, Tanesa, were big fans of The Price Is Right.
“That’s how it is with a baby,” her mother said. Her voice was weak; all the meds she had to take for her heart made her woozy. “I promise, it will pass.”
“But James is never home to help me.” Olivia knew she was pouting, but she was too exhausted to care. She also knew she wouldn’t get much sympathy from her mother, who’d actually welcomed the solitude s
he experienced after Olivia’s father had left. Olivia didn’t want to give her mother a reason to say “I told you so” by complaining too much about James.
“They never are,” her mother said simply, and a few minutes later, they hung up the phone. Olivia knew that despite her mother’s misgivings about men in general, she didn’t want the marriage to end because then James would stop paying for her condo and her nurse. Olivia had only hinted to her mother about the sometimes malicious edge to James; she never said a word to anyone about the time he slapped her. It would be on the tip of her tongue, but something would hold it back. Fear, maybe, that if she said it out loud, she’d be forced to act—to leave him or file a police report. As long as she was silent, it remained a secret, and nobody could judge her for not walking out the door.
Olivia wasn’t exactly sure why she hadn’t. Part of her felt like what he’d done was her fault, that maybe the tone of her voice that night had brought out the worst in her husband—that he felt like she was judging him. Another part of her was sure that no one would believe her. James never showed his darker side in public—he opened doors for her and kept his hand at the small of her back, a tender act of possession. Also, he hadn’t raised a hand or his voice to her again since—he’d been kind and attentive, rubbing her sore feet and massaging her aching shoulders. He’d even attended the baby shower Waverly and Sara Beth threw for her, playing silly shower games and opening their presents. He agreed to name their daughter Madelyn, after Olivia’s grandmother. He indulged her every whim to decorate for the nursery—he sent her flowers at least once a week. It was easy to convince herself the slap was just a one-time thing. She put that night into a box and buried it somewhere deep inside her, leaving no marker so she could easily ignore the spot.
As the months passed, Maddie began sleeping more and Olivia started to feel better. She found a routine that worked for them both, taking long walks each morning with Maddie in the stroller, strapping her daughter to her chest as she vacuumed and dusted the house. She often had lunch with Waverly and Sara Beth, smiling as they oohed and aahed over adorable seven-month-old Maddie. “She’s just a little peach!” Waverly exclaimed. “I want to take a big bite out of her!”
Olivia laughed. “I know, right? There’s something about her chunky little thighs that makes me want to nibble them.” She looked over to the car seat next to her, where Maddie was contentedly chewing on a gel teething ring. Her daughter gave her a drool-soaked grin, showing just the tips of her two front teeth poking through her gums.
“You look like you’ve lost almost all the weight,” Waverly observed, running her sharp gaze over Olivia’s body.
Olivia shifted in her chair, suddenly hyperconscious of her own new shape next to her friends’ leaner silhouettes. While it was true she had already lost the twenty-five pounds she’d gained with the pregnancy, her body had definitely shifted—her hips widened, her breasts swelled, and her stomach developed a small pooch that wouldn’t disappear no matter how many crunches she did at the gym. Just last night, after Maddie had settled to sleep in her crib, James had stared at Olivia’s naked body as she stood in front of the mirror next to the closet, brushing her hair.
“I’ll pay for a tummy tuck, you know,” he said out of nowhere, as though Olivia had been complaining to him. Which she hadn’t. In fact, while she knew her body had changed, Olivia actually felt better about it after giving birth than she ever had before. She was amazed by what it had pulled off, and figured a slightly rounded belly and a little jiggle on her thighs was a small price to pay for the miracle of their daughter’s life.
“Excuse me?” Olivia said, setting her brush on the dresser, then spinning around to face him. She reached for her robe from its hook on the closet door and wrapped it tightly around her, tying it at the waist.
James waved a dismissive hand in her general direction. “Maddie’s seven months old, Liv. If your shape hasn’t bounced back on its own by now, it never will.” Seeing the look of horror on her face, he laughed. “C’mon. Don’t be upset. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You’d be in and out in an afternoon.”
“I don’t need a tummy tuck,” Olivia said, feeling the heat creep up her chest and neck onto her face.
James’s eyes narrowed. “You think it’s attractive, all that fat bouncing around when I’m fucking you?” Olivia cringed. “I’ll have my assistant make the appointment,” he continued, as though his words hadn’t just stabbed her in the heart.
Olivia knew better than to try to argue with him, and in the end, she was happy with the results of the procedure, if not the manner in which it came about. Now, as she drives Maddie home from Ciseaux Salon with her newly darkened and shaped pageboy, she worries about what kind of message she has just given her daughter—that as long as she looks beautiful on the outside, how she actually feels doesn’t matter.
“Do you think Dad will like it?” Maddie asks as they enter their house, gesturing to her hair. Her daughter looks like a different person than the one Olivia picked up from school—her shoulders are pushed back, she walks as though there is an invisible string pulling her up at the top of her head. Hannah did a beautiful job on the color—deepening the natural brown just enough to warm up Maddie’s pale skin. The layers she added create the illusion of fullness, and the longer, feathery bangs frame her daughter’s hazel eyes perfectly, bringing your attention directly to them. She went into the salon looking like a little girl; she came out looking like the pretty young woman she actually is.
“I think he’ll love it,” Olivia says, hoping with everything in her this turns out to be true. James won’t be thrilled she made this kind of decision without consulting him, but Maddie’s happiness might outweigh his need to control how the change came about. She puts her purse on the entryway table and smiles at Maddie. “I’m starved. What sounds good for dinner?”
“Pepperoni pizza!” Maddie says with a playful, sparkly smile.
“Nice try. Too much grease. I think we can manage tomato, mozzarella, and basil, though. And a salad.” She waits a beat, hesitant to bring up anything having to do with school, not wanting to ruin Maddie’s markedly improved mood. “Do you have homework?”
Looking away, Maddie shrugs one shoulder, as though she were trying to shake something off her skin. “Not really. Just some reading. And a trig work sheet, so the teacher can figure out what we already know. Or don’t know.”
“Okay, so, why don’t you work on it in the kitchen while I cook?” This is new for Olivia, being able to spend time with Maddie, doing something other than caring for her daughter’s immediate physical needs. She tries not to worry about something going wrong, that Maddie’s body will reject her new liver or be riddled by some dangerous infection, but there are times she can’t help it. Like tonight, when Hannah told them about losing her daughter, fear overwhelmed Olivia again.
“I sort of was going to check my email,” Maddie says.
“Later,” Olivia says. “Homework first.”
Maddie sighs, but follows her mother into their enormous kitchen. She sets her backpack on the counter and settles onto one of the barstools, watching as Olivia digs through the refrigerator for the ingredients she’ll need. “That was really sad about Hannah’s daughter,” Maddie says, as she pulls out her notebook.
“It was,” Olivia agrees. She feels horrible about accidentally bringing up such a painful subject for this woman they just met. Olivia hadn’t asked for any details—whether or not Hannah was married or how her daughter had died. “I like her.”
“Me, too,” Maddie says. She holds her pencil over a piece of paper. “Maybe you should get your hair done by her, too. You could go back to your natural color. We could match!”
Olivia smiles as she sets the ball of gluten-free pizza dough on the marble-topped counter and unwraps it. “I could. But your dad wouldn’t be happy. He likes me blond.”
Maddie makes a face. “And you always do what makes Dad happy, right? Not what you want to do?”
“How about I think about it?” Olivia says, as she runs a sharp knife through a Roma tomato. Maddie shrugs again, keeping her eyes on the work sheet in front of her. Olivia hates that she hasn’t been a better role model. “I stay with him for you,” she longs to say. “I keep myself small, I keep my mouth shut all because of you!”
But she knows Maddie is too young to understand these kinds of decisions. Her daughter still sees the world in stark divisions of right and wrong, black and white, when the truth is, life is so much more complicated than that, colored by infinite shades of gray.
Maddie
My dad comes home just as Mom and I are finishing dinner, around eight o’clock. He walks into the kitchen, loosening his tie as he enters. He stops short when he sees me sitting at the table, his eyes wide, and stares at my head.
I set down my fork and speak so Mom doesn’t have to. “My hair was so trashed from all my meds, I asked Mom to take me and get it fixed.” I feel Mom’s eyes on me, hoping she’ll understand that I’m trying to keep Dad from getting angry. “I really love it, Dad. All the girls at school are like, fashion models or something. I’m just trying to fit in. And I feel so much better now.” I wait a beat, trying to gauge how he’ll react from the look on his face. “Do you like it?”